Residents pick through the rubble of lost homes and scattered belongings in Hurricane Idalia's wake

Florida and Georgia residents living along Hurricane Idalia’s path of destruction on August 31 picked through piles of rubble where homes once stood, threw tarps over ripped-apart roofs and gingerly navigated streets left underwater

Florida and Georgia residents living along Hurricane Idalia's path of destruction on August 31 picked through piles of rubble where homes once stood, threw tarps over ripped-apart roofs and gingerly navigated streets left underwater or clogged with fallen trees and dangerous electric wires.

“My plan today is to go around and find anything that’s in the debris that is salvageable and clean out my storage shed," said Aimee Firestine of Cedar Key, an island located in the remote Big Bend area where Idalia roared ashore with 125 mph (201 kph) winds Wednesday.

Ms. Firestine rode out Idalia about 40 minutes inland. When she drove back onto the island hours after the storm passed, her heart sank. The gas station was gone. Trees were toppled. Power lines were on the ground. An entire building belonging to the 12-unit Faraway Inn her family owns had been wiped away. Another building lost a wall.

“It was a little heart-wrenching and depressing,” Ms. Firestine said.

At Horseshoe Beach in central Big Bend, James Nobles returned to find his home had survived the storm, though many his neighbors weren’t as lucky.

“The town, I mean, it’s devastated,” Mr. Nobles said. “It’s probably 50 or 60 homes here, totally destroyed. I’m a lucky one, a few limbs on my house. But we’re going to build back. We’re going to be strong. We just got to rebuild. We can’t give up. My lifelong goal was to live on the water. And I’m not leaving just because the storm pushed me away.”

No hurricane-related deaths were officially confirmed in Florida, but the state’s highway patrol reported two people killed in separate weather-related crashes just hours before Idalia made landfall. A man in Valdosta, Georgia, died when a tree fell on him as he tried to clear another tree out of the road, Lowndes County Sheriff Ashley Paulk said.