In his 58 years, John Posey, a lifelong resident of the Forgotten Coast of Florida on the remote eastern edge of the Panhandleswerte gaming, had never evacuated for a hurricane — not for Dennis in 2005, nor for Michael in 2018.

But on Wednesday, as he stood outside his namesake seafood restaurant in Panacea, Fla., a community of about 800 near the marshy shores of Ochlockonee Bay, he admitted that after decades of facing storms head-on, this one felt different. Helene was closing in, and for the first time, he wasn’t sure he could stay.

Across Florida’s Big Bend region, where residents are staring at the third named storm in 13 months, many more people appeared to be heeding evacuation orders, leaving the small towns that dot the coast eerily empty on Thursday.

Wakulla County, where Panacea is, was under a mandatory countywide evacuation. So was neighboring Franklin County, where the waterfront city of Carrabelle, with a population of about 2,600, appeared mostly deserted.

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In Cedar Key, part of a conglomeration of islands off the northwest coast of Florida, the Florida National Guard arrived in the morning to assess the situation and alert the island’s residents of the coming storm.

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“In the last storm here, people would walk by us with beer and we’d say, ‘There’s a hurricane here,’” said Capt. John Meacham. “They’d say, ‘We’ll stick it out.’”

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