MADISON — Sitting in a swivel office chair on Friday, Kenneth Butler had a view of the fleet of line workers' trucks in the parking lot: The window in front of him had shattered into hundreds of shards.
He watched the parking lot of the strip mall he was in turn into the launchpad for Madison's power restoration efforts.
Hurricane Helene's mighty gusts blasted the front windows of the Citi Trends retail store, where Butler is manager.
His home didn't fare much better. The winds ripped the roof off Butler's home, which had just been fixed after Hurricane Idalia last year damaged it.
During Helene on Thursday, "it sounded like someone was grabbing tin and just throwing it everywhere," he said.
Water drenched the home as the storm raged on. All he and his family could hear was the sound of a train whistle.
The category 4 storm made landfall around 11:10 p.m. Thursday just east of the Aucilla River's mouth, roughly 40 minutes south of Madison.
The National Weather Service-Tallahassee said wind speed trackers at Madison County High School and the Madison County emergency operations center recorded wind gusts of up to 80 mph.
Madison County was wiped off the power grid after Helene barreled through, according to a USA TODAY power outage tracker. Power crews were seen all over town Friday beginning the long haul of repairs.
Butler hunkered down with his wife and dog for the hurricane, and as the eye neared the town, they thought they were out of the woods during the fleeting break in Helene's rage.
But the winds intensified 30 minutes later, ushering in the worst of the storm and leaving Butler without a roof.
'When is it going to stop?'
"Lord let this be over," Debra Haynes said she cried aloud when the core of the storm passed.
Haynes stepped out of her house 6:30 a.m. Friday only to find her driveway blocked by massive trees and downed power lines. She had to forge an alternative path to get in and out of her home.
She waited out the storm from her living room chair with her dog Stone, frightened the whole night. The worst of the winds hit around 11 p.m., but by 2 a.m., the winds were still too strong for her liking.
"I kept thinking, 'Oh no, when is it going to stop?' " Haynes said.
Haynes hadn't even finished fixing her roof from last year. Her home has been in her family since the 1960s when her mother first moved in. She never once considered evacuating, even though Madison County officials issued a voluntary evacuation order for its residents.
"I'm old fashioned," she said over the roar of chainsaws coming from outside. "Me and my mom and my brother always stayed through storms, but we never had one like this."
Had she known the storm was going to be that scary, Haynes said she never would've stayed alone. Next time, she's leaving.
People who stay are "taking a chance because it could be that bad," Haynes said.
'The whole house was rattling'
Doreen Gross, and her five grandchildren that live with her, did not take any chances. Gross said her boss had a fully-furnished, unoccupied house he was planning to sell and let them stay in it for the storm.
But the home's sturdy walls didn't shield them from the wails of the winds. "The whole house was rattling, (the kids) were all scared," Gross said. "We were all bundled together."
It was the scariest thing she had ever seen, and Gross said she survived category 5 Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Looking outside Thursday night was like watching a scene from the "Wizard of Oz," she said.
When Gross and her grandchildren returned to their mobile home, they found the bottom of the home gone, trees scattered throughout the yard and their food already starting to go bad in the fridge.
The party of six stood in a line that extended out the door of a local Burger King attached to a small Busy Bee gas station — two of the few businesses in Madison to quickly open their doors in the hours following the storm.
Without a clue of what they were going to do in the days to come, Gross and her grandkids stood in line just grateful to have a hot meal for the night.
"We're just going to have to survive and pray," Gross said. "And just wait it out until it gets better because it has to get better."
Douglas Soule contributed. Breaking & trending news reporter Elena Barrera can be reached atebarrera@tallahassee.com. Follow her on X:@elenabarreraaa.
