Florida beach residents return home 1 week after Hurricane Michael

In this Oct. 14, 2018 photo Dena Frost salvages an unbroken clay pot from the wreckage of her pottery business in Mexico Beach, Fla. For decades, the town has persisted as a stubbornly middlebrow enclave on what residents proudly refer to as Florida's "Forgotten Coast." Businesses are locally owned. While some locals owned posh homes that overlooked the beach on stilts, many lived in mobile homes. (AP Photo/Russ Bynum)
In this Oct. 14, 2018 photo Dena Frost salvages an unbroken clay pot from the wreckage of her pottery business in Mexico Beach, Fla. For decades, the town has persisted as a stubbornly middlebrow enclave on what residents proudly refer to as Florida's "Forgotten Coast." Businesses are locally owned. While some locals owned posh homes that overlooked the beach on stilts, many lived in mobile homes. (AP Photo/Russ Bynum)

MEXICO BEACH, Fla. — With stunned faces and tears, residents of hard-hit Mexico Beach returned home for the first time Wednesday about a week after Hurricane Michael hit to find pieces of their lives scattered across the sand and a community altered.

Nancy Register sobbed uncontrollably after finding no trace of the large camper where she'd lived with her husband. She was particularly distraught over the loss of an old, black-and-white photo of her mother, who died of cancer.

Husband Taylor Register said he found nothing but a stool that uses for cutting his hair, a hose and a keepsake rock that was given to him by a friend 40 years ago.

"That's my belongings," he said, pointing to a small pile beside his red pickup truck. Choking up, he said: "I appreciate God humbling me. Everybody needs it."

Just up the road, tears ran down Lanie Eden's face as she and husband Ron Eden sifted through sand in search of items they left before evacuating from the small beach house they've rented each October for years. They didn't find much — just a large pack of toilet paper that somehow stayed dry and a son's camp chair.

The Edens, who are from Fort Knox, Ky., and are temporarily staying in Alabama, were stunned to see mountains of debris and countless destroyed buildings as they drove into town for the first time. In a state of condominium towers, Mexico Beach was one of the few remaining places with small houses and a 1950s feel.

"Basically, we lost 'old Florida.' It's all gone," Lanie Eden said.

Across the region, state emergency management officials said some 124,500 customers across the Panhandle were still without power Wednesday morning and 1,157 remained in shelters.

In Bay County, home to Mexico Beach and Panama City, 54 percent of customers remained without electricity. Inland, in Calhoun County, 98 percent of the customers didn't have power Wednesday morning, according to the emergency management website. And in Jackson County, which borders Alabama and Georgia, about 83 percent of customers are still without power.

In the meantime, in many areas devastated by the hurricane, law enforcement officials are battling looting of homes and businesses.

Bay County Sheriff's Maj. Jimmy Stanford said deputies have arrested about 10 looters each night since the storm hit. In some parts of the county, residents have spray-painted signs warning that "looters will be shot."

Callaway resident Victoria Smith told the News Herald that thieves came into her townhome while she and her four children were sleeping with the front door open to allow a breeze inside.

"I must've been so exhausted from everything in the past days I didn't even hear them come in," Smith said. "They just snatched my purse out of my hands and ran. ... It was all we had."

Often, the looters have been armed, Stanford said.

"Most of our officers lost their homes, have been working 16- to 18-hour shifts with no sleep, no shower, and now they're encountering armed individuals," he said. "It's a stressful time for everyone in Bay County."

The storm killed at least 16 people in Florida, most of them in the coastal county that took a direct hit from the storm, state emergency authorities said Tuesday. That's in addition to at least 10 deaths elsewhere across the South.

The scope of the storm's fury became clearer after nearly a week of missing-persons reports and desperate searches of the Florida Panhandle neighborhoods devastated by the most powerful hurricane to hit the continental U.S. in nearly 50 years.

The Florida Department of Emergency Management's count of 16 dead was twice the number previously tallied by The Associated Press, and included 12 deaths in Bay County, where the hurricane slammed ashore with 155 mph winds and a catastrophic storm surge last Wednesday.

Bay County also includes Tyndall Air Force Base and the community Lynn Haven, which both were heavily damaged.

The state's tally did not provide details of how the victims' deaths were storm-related, and The Associated Press was not immediately able to confirm those details for all of them. The AP's tally of deaths, in which authorities have confirmed details of how people died, stood at eight in Florida, and 18 overall including other states.

Mexico Beach Mayor Al Cathey said two deaths have been confirmed in his town, a man and a woman who did not evacuate and whose homes were destroyed.

Only one person remained missing in Mexico Beach, Cathey said, adding that authorities were almost certain that that person evacuated before Michael and simply hasn't been contacted.

Read Thursday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.

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