When a hurricane hits Florida, storm-weary residents may think of devastating winds, pounding rain, and dangerous storm surge. Is a mountain of sand swallowing your house? There aren't that many.
That's the reality for some after Hurricanes Helen and Milton hit the Florida Gulf Coast in quick succession in less than two weeks. A 10-foot-high storm surge pushed piles of sand into the village, reaching more than 5 feet in height in some areas.
Thanks to its fine white sand, Florida's beaches are among the best in the world. But powerful storms have turned valuables into expensive nuisances, with sand literally becoming a barrier to recovery as homeowners and municipalities evacuate.
“I've never seen sand like this,” said Scott Bennett, a contractor who has worked on storm recovery since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. “We have wind, rain and water, but no sand.”
The morning after Hurricane Milton made landfall, the roads in Bradenton Beach, about an hour's drive south of Tampa, were lined with sandbanks several feet high (less than a meter) and surrounding several bungalows. The scenery in the old Florida beach town was no different from what it looked like after a blizzard in the Midwest.
“The best way to describe it is like 4 to 6 feet of snow up north,” said Jeremy, a member of the state emergency response team who was surveying the damage that day. Roberts said.
About an hour further south, Ron and Gene Dyer said the storm blew about 3 feet (0.9 meters) of sand into their Venice Island apartment.
“The beach moved through everything,” Ron Dyer said.
After Hurricane Helen, it took dozens of volunteers with shovels and wheelbarrows two days to dig all the sand out of the condo's pool, but Milton eventually backfilled it.
“They just kept digging and turning, digging and turning. … They were out there working on it for two days,” he said. “We have to try again.”
Storm restoration contractor Larry West said his team simply removed all the sand and debris left behind in one of the apartment complexes he was repairing on Manasota Key, about 35 miles (56 kilometers) south of Sarasota. estimates it will do about $300,000 worth of work. He expects many property owners, especially those without flood insurance, will have to pay for this type of cleanup out of pocket.
“Poor homeowners who have to spend $150,000 to clean up are going to be hit hard,” West said.
West said she didn't know where to take the sand after hearing that a local park designated by Charlotte County officials as a drop-off site was filled with sand. According to the county, two areas where dirt can be dropped are still open.
Getty Images
“Right now we're building a mountain in the parking lot,” West said of the apartment complex being renovated. “We're waiting to find out if they'll transport it to another location.”
Officials in hard-hit Pinellas County, home to St. Petersburg, are still crunching numbers on how much damage Helen and Milton suffered from the county's coastline, but county public works Director Kelly Hammer Levy puts the current estimate at 1. One million cubic yards (765,000 cubic meters) of sand were lost.
“A lot of volume is being lost and that's our biggest concern right now,” she told the county's Tourism Development Council. “It's hard to stay positive when it comes to things like this. We know the pictures aren't what we want to see.”
A 2018 coastal restoration project that enhanced the county's shoreline with 1.3 million cubic yards (994,000 cubic meters) of sand cost more than $50 million, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Levy hopes much of the spilled sand can be reused. Pinellas officials are encouraging residents to cart sand back to the beach as soon as the sand is clean.
“Again, we're just removing debris. I've seen some piles with kitchen cabinets in them,” Levy said. “If there was a lot of stuff like that out there, there would be problems.”
Under guidance from the state Department of Environmental Protection, the county is also opening a drop-off site where residents can drop off sand to workers to sort and clean it or dispose of it if contaminated. did.
Meanwhile, Floridians continue to dig out of the storm-blown sand, much of it by hand.
“All shovels are heavy,” said West, a construction contractor. “As far as cleaning goes, this is terrible.”
