One year later: Officials learned lessons from Hurricane Helene

SARASOTA, Fla. (WWSB) - This week marks one year since Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida.

While Helene eventually made landfall in the Big Bend area of the Panhandle, its winds ripped through homes and businesses on the Suncoast, mainly on the barrier islands.

Grocery stores, shops, restaurants and tourism housing that our area heavily relies on were all out of commission for weeks and months.

“Despite being far offshore, [Helene] created a lot of impacts on our county,” Sarasota County Emergency Services Director Rich Collins told ABC7.

That fact is not lost on the county’s emergency management chief, Sandra Tapfumaneyi. “We learned last year many valuable lessons, one of which is that it does not take us to be in a forecast cone to be impacted tremendously by these storms,” s