- December 21, 2024
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Human residents of Longboat Key weren’t the only ones to feel the effects of Hurricane Helene’s catastrophic storm surge.
At Save Our Seabirds on Ken Thompson Parkway, the nonprofit’s facility faced flooding throughout, and as high as 4 feet in some places. The strong waters displaced heavy appliances and wooden boardwalks, ruined the backup generator and led to one bird casualty.
After Helene passed on Thursday, SOS staff were quick to find a way to check on the facility.
“We really wanted to check on the birds,” said Executive Director Brian Walton.
Walton said he was able to secure a boat ride for himself and some staff members through a friend of a friend. The crew knew it was urgent to check on the birds, and Walton said staff were a little tense on the way out.
“I was really nervous coming out on Friday,” Walton said.
When they arrived at the facility, they realized the damage.
Debris from vegetation and items throughout the facility had been thrown everywhere. The largest wooden boardwalk was lifted by the water and moved, partially destroyed in the process.
In the backroom workshop, water damaged many of the power tools stored there, and displaced most others.
Looking at the bird enclosures, Walton said they could see just how high the water had risen — a little above waist-deep.
In anticipation of this amount of storm surge, the SOS staff took about 40 of the birds offsite, according to Walton. Many of the organization’s resident birds had to stay on the grounds during the storm.
Walton said it’s important to know that, at any given time, the organization has about 150-200 birds in their care, whether the birds are out in enclosures or receiving care in the hospital. With that many birds, especially some large birds, evacuations are difficult.
“When you’re dealing with sandhill cranes, vultures, pelicans…you can’t take them all home,” Walton said.
For a while before the storm, Walton said he had been working on finding some commercial space, possibly a warehouse, to set up an agreement with the owner to use in case of situations like this. He has yet to find something ideal for this.
One of the resident birds, a turkey vulture named Ruby, was found dead by the staff that Friday after helene.
Ruby was old and not in great shape, Walton said, but the staff had grown close with her over the years. Some of the keepers spent a considerable amount of time with Ruby while glove training her, according to Walton.
“Staff took it pretty hard,” Walton said.
Before leaving SOS the day Helene hit, Walton said water was already creeping up from the bay behind the campus at 1:30 p.m. The water was heading for the back row of enclosures.
That back row intentionally houses birds that are more used to living with water in the wild, like wood storks, pelicans and cormorants.
In preparation, SOS staff did things like tie a small boat in the pelican enclosure to give them a spot to refuge in the water.
When the crew returned to assess the damage, they got right to work.
One of the highest priorities was cleaning the many ponds throughout the enclosures. These wouldn’t drain due to debris blockage, Walton said, and the ponds must drain to remove bacteria and keep fresh water for the birds.
Cleanup also included removing mounds of debris from around the grounds, picking up tools and appliances and trying to keep the backup generator running so the freezer — which was full of food for the birds — would stay on. The generator ended up ruined by the saltwater, but it worked long enough to keep the freezer alive.
“It was challenge those first couple of days,” Walton said.
Luckily, Walton’s call for volunteers on social media was heard. From Saturday through Monday after Helene, Walton said about 40 volunteers showed up to help out however they could.
That Sunday, SOS was able to open its hospital back up to take in rescues, though in a limited fashion.
All in all, Walton estimates SOS took about $50,000 in losses, which includes extra staff hours, the generator, many lost tools and materials for repairs.
“It’s not catastrophic, but it’s a lot for an organization like ours,” Walton said.
For now, SOS doesn’t have a reopening date in mind for the public, and Walton said he’s not in a rush, especially since people aren’t visiting this area right now.
Until Saturday, the staff was focused on repairing after Helene, but that focus shifted on Sunday with the news that Hurricane Milton was intensifying and heading for Florida’s Gulf Coast.
Looking far into the future, SOS has a plan to make the facility more resilient against storms and flooding.
Walton said he recently received a draft site plan from local architecture firm DSDG for SOS’s new master plan. This new plan will reconfigure the layout of the facility, improve drainage and raise some areas.
