Towers of trash left over from Hurricane Helene still littered the Florida landscape Wednesday as Hurricane Milton barreled toward the Gulf Coast and garbage haulers suspended efforts to remove the debris that could be dangerous in high winds.
With only hours to go before Milton, a Category 3 already churning up “tornadic supercells,” was expected to make landfall somewhere south of Tampa Bay, the trash trucks that had been working around the clock were largely gone.
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And in Tampa, those who chose not to join the exodus out of town, were giving those piles of wrecked furniture and other household items a wide berth.
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“I’m just afraid that the wind is going to pick that stuff up and it’s going to be a projectile,” Heather McClellan, 34, said as she passed a front yard with a pile of furniture that had been ruined by Helene.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said they were able to get a mountain of refuse out of the way.
“So in a little over 48 hours, and they were working all through, through the night, in the wee hours of the morning in (counties) like Manatee, Sarasota and Pinellas, they were able to remove 55,000 cubic yards of debris," he said. "So that’s over 3,000 truckloads of debris."
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DeSantis said that on the most vulnerable barrier islands, they were able to remove at least half of the wreckage.
Sandra Tapfumaneyi, Sarasota County's emergency management chief, said they did the best they could.
“Normally you would have months to clean up that debris, and in a couple of days, you can only do so much,” she said. “The county tried, along with its municipalities, we had workers out, teams going curb to curb, to try to get things moved to the landfill as quickly as possible.”
In Hillsborough County, where Tampa is located, the assistant county administrator for public works, Kimberly Byer, said via email Wednesday that "loose debris can become projectiles in high winds, increasing the risk of injury to individuals and damage to properties."
"We have collected 18,000 cubic yards of storm debris and our residents and small contractors have collected 17,000 cubic yards, for a total of 35,000 cubic yards," Byer said.
But in an earlier interview, Byer told NBC News on Tuesday there was no way to remove all the debris in time.
"There's not enough time and resources too," Byer said. "A lot of our contractors have gone to prep for Hurricane Milton. So they don’t feel it’s safe to be in Hillsborough County … in the eye of the storm."
Tampa Mayor Jane Castor told NBC News on Monday that their efforts to clear the streets of the remaining garbage were hobbled when one of the contractors they hired to help "just didn't show up."
So more city workers were sent out to pick up "as much trash as they could" while they tried to find other trash haulers, she said.
In some cases, Castor said, they relied on “neighbors helping neighbors" to get the trash ready for pickup.
“Just to get that household debris out of the way so Milton doesn’t pick it up and use it as a weapon," she said.
Giancarlos Struse, 26, opted to stay put in his three-story concrete Tampa townhouse.
“Context is everything — it depends on where you live,” he said. “If you live in a wooden house over 50 to 100 years old, then you’re at much higher risk."
But even a fortified residence like that was not completely impervious to flying garbage, Struse conceded.
The windows, he said, "are a risk."
Joseph Malinowski was riding out Milton the same way he rode out Helene — on his sailboat tied to a pier in Tampa Bay.
Malinowski, who has one leg, went viral on TikTok in recent days for refusing police demands to leave his sailboat. Known by locals as “Lieutenant Dan,” he said he feels safer here than on the land.
“I was tied here, the wind was coming from that direction — it was beautiful,” he said of his Helene experience. “I just rode it all out and woke up in the morning, stuck my head out, looked over there and saw people walking in knee-high water. I’m all dry.”
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