ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (WFLA) — In Shore Acres, residents have been hit hard by flooding twice in the last six months.
The first hit came in August with Hurricane Idalia, the second round came in December with a no-name storm. And on Tuesday, residents were preparing to be hit again.
“My house tends to flood my street,” said Laura Rogers who was in line to pick up sandbags to protect her home.
Chuck Lewis was not far behind her in line.
“Precautionary, you never know how bad it’s going to get and I will say the city of St. Pete is out there working harder than I’ve ever seen before,” Lewis said.
All through the neighborhood, homeowners and contractors were putting down sandbags and plastic to prepare for rising water.
Steve Bragg said his work to protect a home in December paid off, so he was doing the same thing Tuesday morning.
“It didn’t come up so high as it did during the hurricane, but if we wouldn’t have done that it would have been in the house, so that’s kind of the deal. You’ve got to do what you can,” said Bragg.
Gavin Fisher and his wife are living in an RV parked in the front of their home because they still haven’t been able to make repairs since Idalia.
“Everything inside the house is gone. I didn’t really realize how toxic floodwater is,” said Fisher.
Fisher said they were forced to clear things out of their home in August to let them dry out and then had to prevent people from stealing their belongings, as they tried to get work done inside the home. Fisher says people came up and were just picking through what they had, with no regard for who owned the property.
On Tuesday, he stopped working on repairs to start working on preventing more water from getting back in his home.
“It’s just pure poison, not only everything from people’s yards and fecal matter and stuff but also all of the toxins and chemicals that come out of cars and the drainages and everything in our whole house was probably two feet under water,” said Fisher.
