ST CHARLES, Mo. — Wednesday was a torturous night for Toni Luttrell, a resident and business owner from St. Charles. She had been talking with her daughter back and forth all morning Wednesday until cell service was knocked out in the afternoon.
Before cell service went down, Luttrell's daughter texted her a video of the storm blowing in.
"It looked horrifying, the winds, the trees, the flooding," Luttrell told 5 On Your Side. "And then we lost contact which was horrifying."
She went to bed knowing her daughter and grandkids had evacuated to a FEMA shelter near Sarasota. Around 8 a.m. central, Luttrell heard from her family at the shelter.
"Everything was good," she said, "they had a backup generator, there was no internet, no cell service, no air conditioning, but they were safe and that's all that matters. Everything else can be replaced, but they were safe."
The Sarasota family didn't know what shape their home would be in, but they are no strangers to disaster clean-up. In 2019, river flooding kept the Luttrell's restaurant closed for weeks. The Boathouse sits right on the Missouri river.
Luttrell described the mess from 2019 like this: "It smells, it is thick and nasty and it's from sand and mud from our river."
She said clean-up is scrubbing, bleaching and just back-breaking labor.
"You really have to live it to know it's relentless," she said.
She is grateful to see Missourians going down to help.
"We have some wonderful community down here on the river and that's how we got through and I know that there is a lot of people volunteering to go to Florida," she said, "that is so important."
One of those people is Red Cross Volunteer Brett Williams.
"We're there to help them with sheltering, with feeding them and providing any kind of comfort for the next few days and months ahead," he said.
Luttrell's family was able to go home Thursday afternoon. Their home was untouched by the storm and their power is back on.