ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Many streets across St. Petersburg have piles of debris lining roads after Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Monday, the city unveiled a new web page that allows people to track where debris has been picked up and how much has been taken to county landfills.
It's a tool many were eager to use despite its lag loading, which the city says it is working to address.
10 Tampa Bay went to neighborhoods where the city says it's picked up the debris, but people who live there tell us they haven't seen any pickup. To be clear, there is less debris around Shore Acres than right after Milton hit, but Shore Acres and areas nearby still have debris lining nearly every street.
The city map says it's attacked this neighborhood the hardest. Homeowners disagree.
Jordan Gaylor moved to Shore Acres from San Diego just four days before Helene.
He hired a private hauler to take some of his storm debris. But much of it remains.
“We just said, you know what, ‘we're not going to wait,’” he says. “With all the rain and stuff, it's starting to stink.”
We came to his street because the city's new debris map shows some of the largest volume of debris taken comes from Shore Acres. Gaylor says he hasn't seen any debris haulers or grapple trucks.
“In my opinion, based on driving here through in and out being here every day and working on this house, that doesn't make sense,” he says. “That doesn't look accurate at all.”
Shore Acres Civic Association president Kevin Batdorf calls the debris “Welchpiles” and says Mayor Ken Welch's administration is failing.
“If the dots on the map are indicating where debris has been collected, it's inaccurate,” he says. “It's not the first time we've flooded. It's not the first time we've had a hurricane. They know better. They should have known to have more trucks, more crews on standby.”
After the web page went live, we called the city to ask about the accuracy of the map and how data is gathered but our calls were not returned.
In a release announcing the map, the city says it uses a systematic plan to remove storm debris citywide that's "time-tested.” Using sanitation zones, the city says, crews start in the northwest corner of each zone and work their way across to ensure proper coverage of the entire city.
It has not said when it will hit each neighborhood, which is why Gaylor and many other homeowners are just figuring it out themselves.
“With their own rented 40-yard [cubic yard] dumpsters doing it on their own,” he says. “So I’d hope that they're not adding that to their statistics but when I look at that map [it] doesn't look accurate at all."
The only timeline the city has given is that it will have all the debris cleaned up within 90 days of the storms, which is required to get removal reimbursement from FEMA.