Hurricane Helene ripped through Florida on Thursday and into the early hours of Friday. Those in the Sunshine State, particularly those along the Gulf Coast and the Panhandle, felt the strength of the then-Category 4 hurricane the most.
As Helene made landfall and progressed toward Georgia, flooding was a major problem. In Tampa, a man named Matt Heller’s house was submerged as a result of the storm surge. In a viral TikTok video, he uses a kayak to navigate through the inside of his house.
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In the clip, Heller is seen paddling in his purple vessel in what was once his living room. By that point, there was upwards of four feet of water inside.
“The kayak was my escape plan in case stuff got too hairy, we could get out,” Heller later said in an interview on CNN. “I didn’t think I was gonna need it in my living room.”
Heller said he basically just stayed afloat in the kayak in the confines of his home. When the power went out, he was able to keep the house partially lit with candles. Like many people in the area, Heller told CNN he was struck by how fast everything happened, noting that “within an hour and a half it went up about four feet from nothing.”
Before this catastrophe, Heller said his home has never experienced anything like this.
It’s hard to imagine going through something like this if you’ve never been, but fortunately for Heller, he made a very wise investment when purchasing that kayak. Then again, he probably never imagined using that kayak inside his home to stay alive. Some things just have a way of working out.
The storm surges that struck the Tampa Bay area have been reported as the biggest to ever strike the region. East Bay, a section in the city, shattered its previous storm surge high of 4.56 feet from 2023 with 7.19 feet in the wake of Helene.
