A tour of Lido, St. Armands keys reveals less damage than Siesta Key

The Ringling Bridge reopened Friday morning. As you coasted down the bridge over the speed limit, the expanse before you seemed normal — and then it wasn’t.

A boat aground at Bird Key Park — a typical post-hurricane sight. Twisted pool screens on homes to the left. Typical.

Front loaders were moving sand on the compromised northern span of the Coon Key Bridge. Long-timers always knew it was a matter of time before something like that occurred.

Altogether — not all that bad.

And then …

The twisted white aluminum catch your eyes. Carport roofs, some hanging like large piano keys, some gnarled into the shape of Dot’s pretzels, resting on top of a few cars at the Sarasota Harbor West condominiums.

Residents’ sailboats and power boats sat tilted on the ground, lifted to land from their moorings.

Across the street, the grand ficus trees that graced the entrance to Plymouth Harbor lay on their sides, with their 10-foot high roots sticking up like toppled lamp stands.  

This was only the beginning of the ravages of Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

On Thursday, a tour of Siesta Key revealed street after street after street of old and new vacation cottages and homes abandoned and beaten, with mounds of the rotting remnants of Hurricane Helene tossed into front yards. Milton added a punishing frosting to the disaster with felled palm trees and broken limbs from decades-old trees strewn about. 

Friday’s tour of the residences of St. Armands and Lido keys, the beachfront resorts and St. Armands Circle was a similar photograph. But to the good, the damage was not quite as bad and extensive as Siesta Key in terms of the number of homes flooded from Helene’s surge and Milton’s winds.

Dror Mizrahi, owner of the Cotton Club of St. Armands, a women’s clothing store, was swooshing the layer of muck from the back of the store to the front.

“Helene was worse,” he said. “The fourth time, fourth time,” he said, noting his 20 years of operating on St. Armands Circle.

Helene pushed four feet of water into the store. “It destroyed everything,” he said.

With Milton, Mizrahi put what remaining merchandise he had high on shelves and covered in plastic. This time around, the water was half or less as high as it was with Milton.

“What are you going to do?” he asked. “Thank God we’re alive. We’ll get over it.”

South of St. Armands Circle, in the 400 block of South Monroe, Mike Regnier, former Sarasota County fire chief, picked up pieces of debris, a man alone in his disaster and admittedly dejected.

“Thing were going great,” Regnier said. He had retired recently after 43 years in the county’s fire department. “Then five days before (Helene), I find out I have head and neck cancer,” he said. “Then this.”

Three feet of Helene’s surge destroyed the interior of Regnier’s home. Milton just added to the misery.

Traveling south on Ben Franklin Drive, a front loader roared and beeped as its driver scooped the leftover layer of sand from the road. Just beyond stood the sign for the Sandcastle Hotel.

You had to admit, it was funny to see 4-foot mounds of sand from Ben Franklin Drive piled in front of the Sandcastle.