Man shows devastating aftermath of Hurricane Helene from his flooded living room
Topics: Florida, TikTok, Climate Change
Joe Yates
Featured Image Credit: Matthew Heller/TikTok
Topics: Florida, TikTok, Climate Change
An 'unsurvivable' hurricane raged through Florida last night obliterating anything in its path.
Hurricane Helene hit the coast of Florida's Big Bend at around 11.10pm Eastern Time, and it was classified at Category 4, with winds of up to 140mph.
Tragically, at least six people have died as a result of the storm, one in Florida, two due to a possible tornado in Georgia, and with others killed by falling trees in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Anderson County, South Carolina.
Almost four million homes and businesses are still without power in Georgia, South Carolina and Florida.
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The 'catastrophic and deadly storm surge' devastated properties on the coast, and forced four feet of water into the home of one man - who took to TikTok Live to report from his own living room.
In the video, Matt Heller can be heard making light of the situation, as he paddles around his front room in a purple kayak wearing nothing but shorts and Crocs on his feet.
"Florida things; Florida man doing Florida things," he says, before proceeding to read out some of the comments he received from nervous onlookers on his TikTok Live, with the first being 'bro get out, what are you doing?'.
Laughing at the message, Heller then says: "Yeah, I've got the chlorine going so it's good. We don't take anything serious, we're Florida man."
The bizarre footage showed the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Helene as you could see waves crash into his patio door in the middle of the night.
He then films bubbles appearing in the water in his living room - where he threw a chlorine filter in to 'disinfect some of the nastiness'.
Heller says: "The foundation of the house, like all this water's bubbling underneath the foundation... so that's not good, I think that's like how sinkholes happen.
"The water is smashing against the window, when I open it, it gets really choppy in here. It's still coming in through the garage. I'm getting annihilated by mosquitos already but you know, go Live on TikTok."
He then spots one of his lights floating outside to which he quips 'whoopsie'.
To add to the craziness of the events unfolding, he later told his followers that he doesn't have building insurance - so it was incredible how he remained so calm throughout the recording, when you and I would probably be panicking.
Speaking to CNN, Heller said: "It just came out of nowhere in probably an hour and a half it came up to about four feet from nothing. We didn't think we were going to get hit by the storm, it didn't even rain all today."
When asked why he had the kayak in his living room, he replied: "It was my escape plan in case stuff got hairy we could dip out, I didn't think I would need it in my living room so yeah I was floating around, I was surprised the power stayed on as long as it did."