The city of St. Petersburg is facing bigger challenges and a bigger price tag when it comes to Hurricane Irma clean up. With the estimated cost going into the tens of millions of dollars, the city is also finding itself the victim of poaching from other cities in Florida.
- City of St. Pete facing Hurricane Irma clean up challenges
- Clean up cost rising; clean up time taking longer
The never ending mounds of broken branches, dead leaves, and debris that litter the curbs of St. Petersburg are pushing the patience of people like Carol Heinen to their limit.
"I'm trying to be patient and put it all in a pile and not yelling at her for pulling all of that stuff out in front of my house," Heinen said.
Mayor Rick Kriseman's spokesperson Ben Kirby said there is a plan and a method the city's using to pick up the debris as quickly as possible.
"Instead of having them go neighborhood by neighborhood, it has designated specific temporary collection sites, and utilizes the city staff to go through the neighborhoods, collect the debris, and bring ti to the temporary sites," Kirby said.
However, the map provided by the city shows the areas colored in, are either completely clean now, in progress of being cleaned, or next in line. But the majority of the city in gray remains under piles of debris.
Although the city has had plans in place to have all the debris removed, they've had to readjust those plans because of other cities poaching their contracted workers.
"Some of these contractors can get a better reimbursement in some other places in Florida. That's one of the reasons that we were driven to come up with this innovative and creative solution. Okay, one of the contractors went somewhere else. How can we best maximize our city resources and the contractor we have to get this job done even faster," Kirby said.
Despite the efforts by the city, Heinen said her Kenwood neighborhood can't be cleaned fast enough. Their annual Bunglow Fest is coming up soon, and all the debris isn't part of the attraction.
"Usually we start harping at people to get their grasses cut and you know, start cleaning up and stuff like that. I can't do that now. These poor people have trash all over the place so I just have to hope that it all gets picked up," she said.
Like most cities recovering from recent hurricanes, St. Petersburg will be applying to FEMA for a reimbursement of the money spent on overtime worked and clean up. Officials said they could get close to 90 percent of the money back.