Welcome to the December 2024 issue of Paradise News. Our December issue is usually full of holiday preparation ideas, festive party recipes, and lighted boat parade details. Boat parades are not planned in St. Pete Beach this year “due to waterborne hazards that are still being cleared,” said a city official, including many vessels that were misplaced and some destroyed by the back-to-back hurricanes Helene and Milton. Treasure Island recently cancelled theirs too, but the city of St. Petersburg plans to sail on Dec. 7, Madeira Beach on the 14th, and Indian Rocks on the 21st. Even New Year celebrations are scarce this year.
Dec. 21 is officially the start of winter elsewhere, and places in Colorado are already buried under feet of cold white stuff. Meanwhile, Nov. 21 was our first taste of fall. It was quite a relief to awaken to a cooler gust of unconditioned air, marking the end to a summer that will be long remembered as a season residents wish they could forget. The last time the area was flooded like this was over a century ago on Oct. 24, 1921.
In a meeting organized by Tampa Bay Beaches Chamber of Commerce President Robin Miller, the mayor of St. Pete Beach, Adrian Petrillo, said “Every single-story home in St. Pete Beach was flooded on Sept. 26 when Hurricane Helene visited. Almost every business in town was also seriously impacted.” The new city manager, Fran Robustelli, seemed to have both residents and businesses in mind when she happily announced that 18 new staff members were arriving starting that very day, to assist the department that handles permitting and inspections, to try to shorten the review time for permit applications. Their target of two-week turnaround seems unlikely when they already had over three hundred in queue, thousands more are expected and only72 were cleared in the last month. The crowd filling out waiting lists in the lobby of city hall to file their permit applications reinforced the unlikely outcome of the mayor’s desires for faster action. In response to resident appeals, the St. Pete Beach City Commission recently approved a Temporary Shelter Placement Application for emergency placement of RVs, manufactured homes and the like, and a Minimal Repair Permit for Temporary Occupancy.
Residents who can afford to, especially the younger ones with families, are considering elevating their homes. Others are praying Helene and Milton were the storms of this century. We could feel bad about our fates, but it is so easy to see others whose lives were upended even worse than our own. Anna Maria Island, for example, was very severely damaged when Milton jogged east just hours before landfall, saving the Tampa Bay area from the worst of his full fury. Take a bridge to the nearby mainland and signs of devastation are fewer and more due to wind than surge. Life nearby continues, almost like the storms are already an unpleasant distant memory.
Hoping to grasp a bit of that distance from the aftermath and from the constant sound of trucks in the street, I spent endless frustrating hours applying and following up on what appeared to be another hopeless effort. However, we were pleased when offered soon after completion to accept a room with a kitchen at a downtown St. Petersburg hotel for a month from Thanksgiving to Christmas through the Florida Department of Emergency Management. We have to thank our friends and family for helping us stay safe and dry for the last two months, especially Sherry and John Holzinger who shared their guestroom at Captiva Cay post Helene, our son Jordan who helped us vacate ours before and let us invade his home in Brandon during Milton evacuation, Joan Walker, who put us up in her Butler House vacation rental for three weeks, and the Lymans, who let us stay in their guestroom in mid-November. We especially want to recognize Lizette LaForge, of Beacon Windows and Doors, for her help with food and support with laundry and mold prevention services.
Paradise News staff wishes all our readers a safe and happy holiday season and a very happy New Year 2025.