Surprise storm may have eaten a ‘tremendous amount of beach' (UPDATED with PHOTOS and VIDEO)

Claudette brought in more than just 45 mph wind gusts to Destin Airport.

For Jerry Stalnaker, manager at Jetty East, the surprise tropical storm blew in an equally surprising visit from Gov. Charlie Crist — and with him the hope that sand is on the way for the building’s critically eroded beach.

Claudette was born Sunday morning and became the first tropical tempest of 2009 to hit the U.S., when she crashed ashore near Destin a little after midnight Monday.

While the storm may have caused at least two deaths in Bay County, by most accounts locally the storm was “uneventful.”

But still Mayor Craig Barker cautioned that it will be days before a true accounting can be done of how much beach Destin lost in the storm.

“From the naked eye I can assure you that there was a tremendous amount of beach erosion from this storm,” he told The Log. “We really won’t get a sense of it till the Gulf settles down.”

At first blush, the initial reaction was that Destin took an almost direct hit — but still dodged a bullet.

Even Jetty East seemed to escape damage. The decades-old condo took a pounding from Hurricane Ike’s storm surge last year, but General Manger Jerry Stalnaker said there was no damage from Claudette. He said the parking lot, which typically is the first to flood, stayed high and dry.

Stalnaker was ecstatic as he described meeting with the governor during his damage tour of the area. 

“We’re sitting here in a meeting with the board president and treasurer when (City Manager Greg) Kisela comes in and says, ‘The governor’s coming, the governor’s coming.’ ”

During the meeting, Stalnaker showed Crist a picture of the condo from 1989 that ran in The Destin Log in late May. The photo showed Jetty East with more than 500 feet of beach.

“He was flabbergasted,” Stalnaker said. “There was no beach to show him. He saw water coming under the pavilion. He said some general things like, ‘Hey, we are gonna help you out here.’ ”

______

To see more photos from the Governor's tour of Destin, click here.

______

Stalnaker floated an idea to the governor that the city piggyback with Eglin Air Force Base, which has already secured permits, to restore the most critically eroded sections of beach from the jetties to Destin on The Gulf. For those property owners who say they don’t need the sand — and have filed lawsuits to back up their objections — they could be bypassed until the litigation is settled.

“We’ve got to have some beach reconstruction, that’s very clear to me,” Crist told Kisela and Barker as waves generated by a relatively mild 3- to 5-foot storm surge sloshed behind him.

Barker and Kisela told Crist during the morning briefing that the main snag the city has run into in its effort to restore local beaches is state permitting. To see the photos of beach damage that the city showed the governor, click here.

“Maybe this is something you can help us get done,” Barker said. “We’ve been in the pipeline for permitting for close to three years.”

“We would love to get our permitting resolved by next season,” added Kisela.

Kisela estimated beach resoration could be completed six to seven months after the proper state permits were obtained.

Other than erosion, Claudette also caused intermittent power outages Sunday night and Monday morning. The Log building on Airport Road was without power off and on for hours as was City Hall, which operated on generator power.

The storm apparently also breached Highway 98 sometime over night near Destin West on Okaloosa Island. See photos, click here. Claudette's wave action also took a bite out Scenic Highway 98 near Destiny by The Sea subdivision. See the photos, click here.

The storm also knocked down a couple of light poles. Barker said the upland damage was “not a significant loss” and would likely lead to insurance claims for damages of $25,000 or less.

And while Claudette had her sights set on the Destin area, so did the rest of the nation. The city was mentioned on newscasts throughout cable and network news, The Weather Channel's Jim Cantore descended on the region, and Barker told The Log that he participated in a live interview on CNN. He said he prepared for the interview for 30 minutes and it lasted about one minute.

“They wanted to know what we were experiencing on the ground and how we prepared,” Barker said. “Claudette to me was a good opportunity or run through for what could have been a more significant storm. It should be a reminder to all of us that we can never take for granted that things will always be calm.”

Florida Freedom Newspaper's Tom McLaughlin contributed to this story.

______

To see photos of surfers taking advantage of surf kicked up by Claudette, click here.

To see photos of the storm gathering on the horizon of Destin, click here.

To see more shots from the beach, click here.

To read about the science behind Claudette, click here.

To read the tourists' twitter report on the storm, click here.

The Florida Freedom gang in Panama City is liveblogging the storm. And, yes, The Weather Channel's Jim Cantore is on the scene. Click here for their up-to-the-minute reports.

______