Crews remove a fallen tree from a home belonging to the Bruce family in St. Augustine. | Amy Tarmey
Published on October 18, 2024 at 9:30 am
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The Bruce family have lived in their St. Augustine home for 30 years, and it wasn’t until Hurricane Milton that they suffered serious storm damage. Now, the community is supporting the family and helping them get back on their feet.
“We hardly even know these neighbors, but they really went by the scripture: ‘Love thy neighbor as yourself,’” Valerie Bruce tells Jacksonville Today. “They are unbelievable people. My heart is just as grateful as ever for these people.”
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Hurricane Milton came ashore as a Category 3 hurricane Oct. 9 near Siesta Key on the Gulf Coast. The storm then crossed the state and did particular damage in St. Johns County and south of there.
The hurricane left the Bruces with thousands of dollars in damage in the form of a hole in their roof, a mangled fence and a torn-up yard. To top it off, their home is uninsured, and they didn’t even know it until just weeks before the storm due to a notice from their insurance company being delivered to the wrong address.
So when, after the storm, retired veteran Bob Bruce returned from the store with a new chainsaw, ready to get to work removing the tree that fell on the corner of their house, one of his neighbors stopped him.
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That was Scott Babbitt, a Realtor. Babbitt stepped in and found local companies, like J. Lee Construction, who came by and removed the tree from the house for free.
Meanwhile, neighbors Amy Tarmey and Gaston Buschiazzo chipped in the best way they knew how: with the help of the customers from their St. Augustine cafe, Buena Onda.
“That day, when we were taking care of the cafe and our property as well, already I was trying to think of ways we could give back or support people affected by the hurricane,” Tarmey says. “It became apparent that I’m looking for ways to support hurricane victims, but it was staring me in the face that it was our neighbor next door who needed our help the most.”
The day after the storm, Tarmey posted on the cafe’s social media pages that they would be raising money for the Bruce family. By the end of the day, she was able to hand them around $1,300 in cash.
She also set up a GoFundMe to continue raising money for the repairs the family will need for their house. At the time of writing, the fundraiser has collected another $1,000, and Tarmey is hoping they can get thousands more to help the family.
Family ‘just shocked’
The Bruces didn’t even know.
What they do know is that other people in Florida are worse off after Milton, but they are thankful for all of the “fantastic people” who have pitched in so far.
“Amy set the GoFundMe up, and I didn’t even know about it until a couple days later,” Valerie Bruce says. “I was just shocked. They just took this upon themselves. It just shocked us.”
For Tarmey, it was all about being a good member of her community.
“You feel helpless when you see all this destruction, like with Hurricane Helene in North Carolina, and what’s happened on the Gulf with both hurricanes,” Tarmey says. “It makes you feel really helpless, but there’s always ways to help. And when it’s there right next door to you, you can’t ignore it — or at least I couldn’t ignore it.”
When Jacksonville Today spoke with Tarmey, she was waiting to run into one of the Bruces so she could hand off the first chunk of funds from the online fundraiser: more than $900.
