St. Pete Mayor Ken Welch reflects on Hurricane Helene one year later

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Waterlogged furniture and mementos that made Arthur Finegold’s house a home still sit in the living room he hasn’t used in a year. Hurricane Helene is to blame. 

Local perspective:

The storm flooded Finegold’s home in Shore Acres with three feet of water.

READ: Hurricane Helene, Milton: Some Manatee County residents still waiting for help one year later

"Furniture had floated and now was in a different place on its side and pretty much wrecked, and all these other things were just filled with water," he said. "So, it was pretty shocking."

Repairs started about a month ago.

"It was difficult just to figure out in what order we were going to do things, because it's our goal to have this house lifted 13 feet. So, how do you combine that with restoring the house? And then we had to make a decision. Were we going to stay with it being substantially damaged? Or would we get an appraisal to raise the value of the house, so that we would be under 49%, and we could start sooner on getting the house repaired," Finegold said.

MORE: Treasure Island in 'recovery mode' one year after Hurricane Helene

"So, those were difficult decisions to make. And of course, the permit process took much longer than we thought. Maybe three months, maybe a little bit longer. And there was an issue with some of the workers getting some work done. So, we lost a couple of months there. So, we're much further behind than we thought we'd be at this point," he said.

Finegold said the Elevate Florida program also denied their application to help lift their home after they waited for six months. They’ve been living in a studio apartment ever since the storm.

"The whole thing is, you know, an upheaval ordeal. We were lucky in terms of our mortgage. So far, we've had forbearance, but that's going to end this month. So, we're going to be paying rent, and we're going to be paying mortgage," he said.

By the numbers:

Finegold’s permit is one of nearly 14,400 post-disaster emergency permits St. Pete officials issued related to Helene and Milton damage. Almost 280 were demolition permits.

READ: Tommy Bahama returns to St. Armands nearly one year after Hurricane Helene

"We have caught up with most of the backlog," St. Pete Mayor Ken Welch said. "We still want to focus on folks who have not drawn down a permit, because you actually need to do that. We think there are about 5,000 folks that need to actually do that, but we have applied, you know, obviously it was a deluge of permitting when this started. We've added staff. We've tried to align our processes to try to draw that backlog down."

City officials said there have been about 15,500 post-disaster emergency permits submitted since Helene. 

"Almost like debris, with permitting, it just was an issue of demand versus resources. With debris, you could not move two million cubic yards of debris in a month. It just physically is not possible. Kind of the same thing happened with permitting. The volume of permitting just was more than we could handle that those resources. Examiners and inspectors were in demand across the southeast," Welch said.

"So, just even getting that extra staff to augment was difficult, and we did that. I think we had 10 to 12 folks, some from the state, some from private sector. We're working to have that contract in place for the private sector if we need that going forward," Welch said.

What's next:

City officials are also hoping to allocate nearly $160 million in federal money early next year to help with the long-term recovery from Helene and Idalia with the Sunrise St. Pete program. They’re expecting the final grant agreement from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which should come in September or October. 

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Once that’s in place, the city will launch programs estimated for early 2026.

They plan to allocate the money in the following ways:

• $61 million for near-term residential recovery and relief with $35,000,000 for residential recovery and elevation: rehabilitation, $14,000,000 for disaster relief reimbursement and $12,000,000 for residential recovery and elevation: reimbursement.
• $58 million is for long-term housing resiliency, with $48,000,000 for affordable rental housing, $5,000,000 for home buyer assistance and $5,000,000 for voluntary buyouts and acquisitions.
• $25 million is for public infrastructure mitigation, with $6 million for community support services. Funds for planning and administration over the six-year grant period include $7,910,200 for program administration and $1,889,800 for post-disaster improvement and planning.

"A new reality says our infrastructure is not built to handle this level of storm impact. We are seeing, as you said, folks are seeing water in neighborhoods that never flood. Even without a storm being in sight, you've got rainy day flooding in some of our neighborhoods," Welch said.

Dig deeper:

City Council also recently approved raising residents’ utility rates starting in October to help fast-track infrastructure upgrades over five years.

"We want to move up about $600 million worth of investments and plants and capacity in stormwater pumps, you name it, to get us to a point where we're able to withstand the kind of storms that we saw last year," the mayor said.

Hardening plans were already underway, like improving the Northeast Water Reclamation Facility to withstand 11 feet of storm surge. That’s not high enough, though, after last year’s storms, Welch said.

READ: $1.3M federal grant helps Bay Area plan for post-disaster recovery

Helene and Milton’s storm surges forced officials to cut power to the facility for the first time, forcing residents to avoid flushing toilets and showering for a couple of days.

"The environment has changed and the impacts have changed and our response needs to change as well," Welch said.

They’re now upgrading it to 15 feet.

Big picture view:

Welch said he’ll also remember the 2024 hurricane season for how people responded to the storms.

"The spirit of community was very powerful. You saw neighbors helping neighbors. You saw businesses opening up and helping. You saw food trucks come in, working with us. Things like the Hometown Haulers, where we got folks to bring in their trucks and help us try to move debris between Helene and Milton," Welch said. 

"So, the community spirit of St. Pete really shined through, and then the resilience. We knew that, and my message was, look, debris is a 90-day issue, we're going to handle it. Beyond that is how we rebuild and how we rebuild stronger, and that's where we are right now. Not just rebuilding, but we've got to be more resilient because our environment has changed, and this is kind of our new reality. Helene was more than 100 miles away and looked at what it did to us. And so, I think folks are embracing that higher focus on resilience moving forward, but I couldn't be prouder of this community and how they came together," Welch said.

What they're saying:

Just down the road in Gulfport, Dia Vartsakis and her dad recently reopened their restaurant, Neptune Grill. Four feet of water flooded the restaurant. 

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"There was no door," she said, remembering when she first walked in after Helene. "All the furniture was pretty much shoved towards the back of the dining room."

Right now, they’re open Thursday-Sunday with a limited menu. She hopes to be fully reopened by October.

"There was a lot moments of feeling defeated, like, ‘what am I doing?’ You know, ‘what am doing to myself?’" she said.

She didn’t get permits to start rebuilding until February. Insurance paid for structural repairs, but Vartsakis said she never got anything from FEMA. She’s been using her savings and small business association loans to rebuild.

"I really, really hope that this is the worst thing I have to go through in my lifetime," Vartsakis said.

Despite the wait, she said it was well worth it.

"When I close the doors to move on to whatever that next chapter is, I want it to be because it was a decision that we chose out of happiness and tears and hugs of like it's been a great run, you know, we're all moving on to the next chapter, not out of devastation," Vartsakis said.

Devastation, something too familiar still for so many one year after Hurricane Helene unleashed it.

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