Manasota woman recovers after home destroyed by Helene

Whipping winds – the sound of Hurricane Helene ripping through Manasota Key, as swells smashed into the island. Even so, Marsha Viglianco stayed to watch from her back porch.

“I don’t want them to come into my condo, but I think they’re going to,” said Viglianco.

A prediction that would come crashing down on Viglianco and her home of 30 years.

“I just went numb, because I thought ‘there’s nothing I can do’,” said Viglianco.

She watched helplessly as the waves shattered her glass doors, and invited themselves inside.

“The waves just got even more intense and they were no longer splashing up on us, occasionally, they were roaring in here,” said Viglianco.

Her picture-perfect paradise now looks like a war zone. Its foundation was left hanging, in front of the water that cracked it.

As she picked through the rubble, she found not every memory had been swept away.

“Those are the ashes of my son who has passed away,” said Viglianco pointing above her head.

Sitting on a shelf is her son Alan, whom she raised on the island.

“The first thing I walked in, is I wanted to see if that was still sitting there, and it is… Untouched,” said Viglianco. “But that’s been sitting up there for the last nine years. And it was nice to see it still there.”

A sign that although the storm took her possessions, It could not take her family.

Viglianco told me if her son were still here, he would have led the fight to clean the house up and rebuild it.

While that is still her goal, she said her biggest fear is that no matter how they rebuild, a new storm will come back and destroy her home again.