Volunteers moved boxes of records out of the flooded City Hall, scraped mud off the sidewalks, and helped business owners mop out their shops and bring plates, pots and pans outside to dry in the sun.
an unusually rapid degree of sea level rise across the Gulf Coast since 2010, including on Cedar Key. Warming temperatures are making tropical storms stronger and more frequent. Storm surges are becoming higher.Davis is a seventh-generation Cedar Key denizen. Her 112-year-old house around the corner came through the hurricane fine, as it has dozens of times. She expects it to survive many more and for the town to rebuild as it always has since it was founded in 1842.
“It’s a buffer, a natural, living shoreline buffer. And you can see it held,” Colson said, pointing to the bright green marsh that was slowly emerging. “You can see the difference where it is, where it held.”“This guy didn’t want us to [plant sea grass]. He owns that dock, and he didn’t want to stop to let us do it,” Colson said, pointing to a dock that was wrecked by Idalia. “So now he has no dock. Living shoreline — write that down. It works. And it’s cheap, cheap, cheap. Living shoreline.
On Cedar Key, Mayor Heath Davis said Idalia was the worst storm the town has ever seen, even without a direct hit. “When you’re working in the water, you learn to live with the water,” the mayor said. “Resiliency is a marketing term. What we’re doing is we adapt. We don’t have a lot of sea walls here, because sea walls don’t work. We have native vegetation, and we promote that. It’s that working with our environment. … People have been trying to beat up and kill Florida forever, and it just keeps beating back.