Sen. Ashley Moody visits Treasure Island days before Hurricane Helene anniversary

TREASURE ISLAND, Fla. - Just a couple of days away from Hurricane Helene’s one-year anniversary, Senator Ashley Moody visited Treasure Island, pledging to help the community continue to recover.

"I was so heartbroken after the one-two punch that this area suffered last year, and it's hard to believe we're coming up on a year," Senator Moody said during a press conference Wednesday.

She was joined by local leaders, including Treasure Island Fire Chief, Trip Barrs.

"We’re in recovery mode, and we had to set the expectation," Chief Barrs said. "This is a years-long process."

What they're saying:

"A lot of our community buildings were damaged, our recreation, our public works facilities. We need to get concentrating and working and funding the rebuilding of those facilities so that our residents and businesses can rebuild themselves. We hav to have the infrastructure done before we come back to a vibrant community that you know us to be," Chief Barrs said. 

Hurricane Helene also destroyed the fire and police stations. Chief Barrs and Treasure Island Police Chief John Barkley showed Senator Moody their current stations before the press conference.

"We have fire and police working out of trailers, and that is difficult coming from a law enforcement family. As you know, my husband is a law enforcement officer. It is difficult work anyway and trying to work out of a trailer as you're stepping out every day to put yourself between chaos and order and crime and safety, you want to have a place you can go back to, a home base so to speak, that's stable and safe and secure, and trailers can't be a long-term solution. We are committed to helping this country." Moody said.

READ: Casey Key business reflects one year after Hurricanes Helene, Milton: ‘We are back’

Dig deeper:

The city commission approved the location of a new public safety facility earlier this year, next to City Hall. It will house the fire and police stations, but it will be a couple of years before it’s built.

Moody also highlighted the $813 million dollar Department of Housing and Urban Development grant recently awarded to Pinellas County for residents recovering from Hurricanes Idalia, Helene and Milton. Seventy percent of it is for people with low to moderate incomes.

"This is a celebration about resources coming, and we'll keep paying attention. We'll keep focusing on how we restore Pinellas County and make it strong, especially here where it was hardest hit in Treasure Island I know for many months," she said.

"This is people first money," Brian Scott, Chair of the Pinellas County Commission, added. "This is money that is designed to help people recover, lift you up, get you back into your homes," Scott said.

Applications will be open in a few weeks, and county leaders hope to have money in people’s hands by Christmas. They say check the county’s website for applications.

Scott also spoke about the $125M in Pinellas County tourist development tax dollars going towards beach renourishment work that started two weeks ago on Indian Shores.

They are adding seven feet of elevation and extending the beach out into the water as they work their way south.

Senator Moody also highlighted a bill she’s co-sponsoring that would require all new vehicles to have AM radio. She said it’s something she first worked on as Florida’s Attorney General after some car manufacturers stopped putting it in vehicles.

"We pushed, at the time, Congress to say you have to do something about this. We cannot just abandon our traditional way of communicating in times of distress and disaster, and who would have thought that I'm now a Senator, that I get to work on this legislation. And I'm proud to say, while it didn't pass in the last Congress, in this new Congress, the 119th Congress, we've already gotten it out of committee in the House, and now we've got to push it forward and get this thing passed," Moody said.

"AM radio has always been a medium that can be used to get out emergency information when other ways of communicating fail, whether that's Internet, sometimes when electricity is out, sometimes cellular is out," she said.

It’s a message local leaders echoed.

"If you don't have that type of communication, because everything else, we have the greatest cell phones in the world and they all got wiped out after the storm," Chief Barkley said. "You couldn't get a bar. You couldn't talk to people on your cell phones," he said.

"You have to have some type of communication because absence of reliable communication starts the rumors and all the other things that's going on and that just isn't good for anybody. So, to have AM radios in people's cars and portable radios people have in their homes, it couldn't be any more important," Chief Barkley said.

What's next:

The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the bill on Sept. 17, and it has now moved to the house floor.

City officials say they’re applying for grants to help pay for the new public safety facility, and infrastructure projects, like seawalls and underground utilities.

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