BRADENTON BEACH, FL – When a hurricane approaches Florida, storm-weary locals may envision catastrophic wind, torrential rain, and a hazardous storm surge. Are sand mounds eating their homes? Not very much.
Hurricanes Helene and Milton wreaked havoc on Florida’s Gulf Coast in less than two weeks, making this reality for some. Storm surges up to 10 feet (3 meters) drove mountains of sand into settlements, some of which were 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall or more.
Florida’s beaches are renowned for their pristine, white sand. However, the severe storms have transformed the precious commodity into a costly nuisance, with sand forming real hurdles to recovery as homes and communities dig their way out.
“I’ve never seen sand like this,” said Scott Bennett, a contractor who has been working on storm cleanup since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. “Wind, rain, water, but never sand.”
Florida Digs Out Of Mountains Of Sand Swept In By Back-To-Back Hurricanes
The morning after Hurricane Milton hit land, the roadways near Bradenton Beach, about an hour south of Tampa, were bordered with sandbanks a few feet (less than a meter) high, encircling several bungalows. The vistas from the Old Florida beach town were similar to those after a stormy Midwestern blizzard.
“The best way to describe it, it’s like getting 4 to 6 feet (1.2 to 1.8 meters) of snow up north,” said Jeremi Roberts, a member of the State Emergency Response Team who surveyed the damage that day.
Another hour south, Ron and Jean Dyer said that the storms swept nearly 3 feet (0.9 meters) of sand up against their Venice Island condo.
“The beach just moved over everything,” Ron Dyer explained.
After Hurricane Helene, hundreds of volunteers armed with shovels and wheelbarrows worked for two days to remove all of the sand from the condo’s pool, just to have Milton refill it, he said.
“They continued excavating and spinning… “They spent two days doing that,” he added. “We got to do it all over again.”
Larry West, a storm recovery contractor, estimates that his team will spend roughly $300,000 cleaning up the sand and debris left behind at one of the condo buildings he is rehabilitating on Manasota Key, about 35 miles (56 kilometers) south of Sarasota. He expects that many property owners, particularly those without flood insurance, will have to pay for this type of cleanup themselves.
“The poor homeowner who’s going to have to spend $150,000 cleaning up, that’s going to hurt them hard,” West told me.
West said he’s not sure where to take the sand after learning that a nearby park designated as a drop-off location by Charlotte County officials was filling up. According to the county, two sand drop-off sites remain open.
“Right now I’m building mountains in their parking area,” West said of the condo complex he’s rebuilding. “We’re just kind of waiting to find out if they’re gonna have us transport it to a different location.”
Officials in Pinellas County, home to St. Petersburg, are still calculating how much damage Helene and Milton caused to the county’s coastline, but county Public Works director Kelli Hammer Levy estimates that 1 million cubic yards (765,000 cubic meters) of sand were lost.
“A lot of volume has been lost, and that’s our main concern here right now,” she told the county’s Tourism Development Council. “It’s difficult to be optimistic in the face of some of these circumstances. I understand the photographs are not what we want to see.”
A 2018 beach renourishment project to shore up the county’s shoreline with 1.3 million cubic yards (994,000 cubic meters) of sand cost more than $50 million, according to the US Army Corps of Engineers.
Levy hopes that most of the displaced sand may be recycled. Pinellas County officials are encouraging individuals to cart their sand right back onto the beach, as long as it is clean.
Florida Digs Out Of Mountains Of Sand Swept In By Back-To-Back Hurricanes
“Again, we only need to clear debris. “I’ve seen some piles out there with kitchen cabinets in them,” Levy explained. “We’re going to have a problem if we have a lot of that stuff out there.”
The county has also established a drop-off station where residents can leave sand for staff to screen and clean, or dispose of if it is polluted, in accordance with the state’s Department of Environmental Protection guidelines.
Meanwhile, Florida homeowners continue to dig out of the storm-driven sand, many by hand.
“Every shovelful is heavy,” explained West, the building contractor. “This is horrendous, as far as the cleanup.”
SOURCE | AP
