Tampa and FEMA officials listen to North Tampa residents' flooding concerns

City of Tampa leaders and FEMA officials held a meeting to allow homeowners to discuss their concerns after Hurricane Helene and Milton.

Homeowners living in Forest Hills want answers regarding recent flooding.

Belinda Trask said Hurricane Milton flooded a portion of her home. She has lived in Forest Hills for nearly 15 years.

"When Hurricane Milton came through that was it! We had a waterfall come in through that room in the back, under the door, in the walls and everything through the closet. It reached all the way to my kitchen area," she said.

The City of Tampa said the Forest Hills neighborhood had three pumps, but they failed due to power outages. Only one pump had a backup generator, but it did not work for some reason.

Last week, Tampa City Council voted to launch an investigation or outside assessment to investigate the issue.

"So all I want is process and what we're going to do to make sure that we find out what went right during Milton and during Helene and what went wrong and how can we prevent that from going wrong again," said Tampa City Council Member Luis Viera.

"You had a lot of areas that were in non-flood zones, Zone X and it flooded so by doing that, I'm not pointing fingers at anybody. I don't have a conclusion." he added.

Mayor Jane Castor said TECO met its goal of getting the electricity back on in neighborhoods.

She also said the city has hired an additional 100 contractors to help pick up yard waste. She asked for people to be patient.

"We're talking about the estimated 10,000 football fields full of debris. This isn't your average trash run we see twice a week," said Mayor Jane Castor.

"Those were storms of historic nature. Those ponds and those pumps are made for 25 year storms, that's about 8 inches of water. We saw 16 inches of water on a community that was already saturated. There is no water storm system in the world that is built to take care of that," said Mayor Castor.

Council member Viera said Tampa City Council will discuss an outside assessment or investigation into flooding issues at a meeting on Nov. 7.

"It doesn't make any sense."

FEMA guidelines for debris removal do not include condos or condominiums because they are considered commercial enterprises. A public information officer for the City of Clearwater told ABC Action News, "We are not removing debris from condos; we do consider them commercial."

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