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St. Pete residents without flood insurance still cleaning up after last week’s rain storms

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Published  September 10, 2024 8:29pm EDT
St. Petersburg
FOX 13 News

Cleanup continues following heavy rainstorms

Kailey Tracy reports

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - It only took about an hour for two feet of water to flood Gary Dykens’ home of more than 25 years last Wednesday night in St. Pete.

"It was seeping all through the doors, even through the sliding glass door, seeping under the tub," Dykens said. "Everywhere there was an orifice it was coming from. The ground was so saturated. So, it doesn't take long for them when you get it up above the tub level. The toilet, the tub overflowed. You got sewage in the house, and so, the whole house has to be gutted."

He’s not alone. Neighbors a few houses down said they climbed through a window to escape, because they didn’t want to let more water into the house through the front door. Several neighbors on Fourth Avenue North and 58th Street North lost almost everything, like Dykens. Their belongings sat on the curb, their lives lining the street Tuesday.

RELATED: St. Pete leaders address flooding after heavy rain overwhelmed city's water system

"The dog is swimming around the house, and it was really crazy," Dykens said.

City leaders said the rush hour rainfall was record-breaking. The water system in St. Pete is only designed to handle 7.5 inches of rain in 24 hours, not the four to five inches that fell in some parts of the city in just an hour on Wednesday, according to Claude Tankersley, the city’s Public Works Administrator. 

The ground was also already more than saturated, too, officials said. The average rainfall for August is close to nine inches, they said, but St. Pete got about 20 inches this August.

Dykens and others, though, said they want more answers from the city. They said they don’t have flood insurance, because it’s not a flood zone, and have never had issues.

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"You have a lot of angry people," Dykens said. "They need to help us out maybe a little bit. They need to put a sump pump in at the baseball field. As far as I'm concerned, that's not enough over there."

Neighbors also pointed to rapid development as possibly causing issues. Tankersley, though, said that’s not to blame.

"Since about the 1980s, whenever a new development comes in, that new development has to get a permit from the Southwest Florida Water Management District, it's a stormwater management permit that the development has to get, and the development has to show that the rate of stormwater flow off of their property is the same after the development is finished as it was before the development of things," Tankersley said. "We call that pre-development and post-development flow."

The city said it’s increasing its storm drain cleaning crews from four to six, meaning eight more people and four more vehicles in October. They also said the city has poured more than $1 billion into projects to improve stormwater infrastructure across the city. They’re planning to have first responders stationed in areas that experience repetitive flooding during storms too.

Dykens, who’s living in a camper while he rebuilds, said frustrated doesn’t even begin to describe how he feels.

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"It’s very hard for me to talk about. This is a very sad moment. No one should have to go through this," he said.

Neighbors, including Dykens, said they want the city to help pay for the repairs to their homes from Wednesday’s storm. 

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