It’s been a brutal few weeks for my adopted hometown of St. Petersburg, Florida. Hurricane Helene battered us with a six-foot storm surge on September 27, and Hurricane Milton brought 17 inches of rainfall and near 100 miles-per-hour winds less than a fortnight later. My home was miraculously spared from flood damage both times, but many of my friends and neighbors lost everything.
More than a week after Milton, our city is still a mess. You wouldn’t know it from listening to Vice President Kamala Harris’s cloying, made-for-social-media, 82-second phone call on October 9 with St. Petersburg’s Democratic mayor, Ken Welch, best known for having gone home early during Hurricane Ian in 2022. Less than 48 hours after Governor Ron DeSantis had declined her phone call, arguing that she wasn’t “in the chain of command” and hadn’t shown interest in earlier hurricanes that have ravaged our state, the vice president thanked Welch “for just answering the call to lead,” and boasted that FEMA would open a “full-service disaster-recovery center in St. Petersburg.”
In fact, FEMA opened the center last Monday in Largo, about a 30–40-minute drive from my house and from most other parts of St. Pete. I visited and found the so-called recovery center wildly understaffed and inadequate to meet the needs of a reeling region. The center was so crowded that I had to park a half-mile away. Hundreds of people waited, many in the hot sun, to talk to one of a handful of FEMA employees. Two people near the back of the line told me that they had applied online for FEMA assistance and were denied it. Another told me that he tried to appeal on the phone but was disconnected after two hours on hold. The Salvation Army was there distributing meals, but alas, when I arrived around lunchtime, they were already cleaned out and could only offer a tin of Jello and some oatmeal crème bars. “We were prepared to serve 300 meals today, but those went quickly,” said a female volunteer.
FEMA apparently doesn’t want the public to see the chaos at the Pinellas County recovery center. A security guard came over to stop me as I took a video of the line. “We were told no one is allowed to take photos or videos,” he said.
“Folks are looking into your eyes,” Harris told Mayor Welch on their call, “to see something in you that lets them know everything’s going to be okay.” Welch and other St. Petersburg officials have failed on that front. The city picked up very little of the contaminated furniture, flooring, and household effects lining curbs across St. Pete in the 11 days in between Helene and Milton. Now the mayor says that removal efforts could take months. Welch, knowing that Hurricane Milton was on its way, should have moved heaven and earth to clean up much more of the Helene debris. Most of us still have two hurricanes’ worth of detritus outside our homes with no idea of when it will be gone.
That wasn’t the mayor’s only misstep. Instead of requiring construction companies to remove their cranes as a safety preauction ahead of Milton’s landfall, Welch simply warned residents in their environs to vacate. One of those cranes crashed, and while no one was injured, it could have been catastrophic. The incident was characteristic of his and other officials’ failure to help residents prepare for Milton. Early on the Sunday morning before Milton made landfall, I went to my pickup spot on 62nd Avenue to get sandbags. The line was a mile long. Many saw the line and gave up.
Instead of disaster relief, the mayor seems more focused on implementing DEI (“intentional inclusivity,” as he calls it) and securing a deal for a new baseball stadium to replace Tropicana Field, which saw its roof swept away by Milton, in 2028. The city’s share of the new stadium’s tab is $417 million, and the deal is ladened with diversity initiatives. Meantime, the city’s infrastructure is a mess. Flooding is a massive problem even after relatively minor storms, let alone major hurricanes.
Harris called DeSantis “irresponsible” and “selfish” for not taking her calls. At least the governor was here while the vice president was at a star-studded fundraiser in L.A. Indeed, even Harris’s boss, Joe Biden, didn’t share the vice president’s perception, claiming that DeSantis had been “cooperative” and was doing a “great job.” Harris nevertheless accused DeSantis of playing “political games.”
Enough: if the White House wants to help us, it could start by appropriately staffing our regional FEMA offices and call centers.
Photo by BONNIE CASH/AFP via Getty Images