In Milton’s wake, Tampa Bay picks up the pieces — again

After Hurricane Milton’s punishing rampage had ended Thursday, Florida residents turned their focus to yet another daunting recovery.

The storm — which made landfall at Siesta Key on Wednesday — pounded the state before dawn with relentless wind and rain. It spawned deadly tornadoes, swamped streets with record-breaking rainfall and inundated inland communities. Barrier Island residents that barely had begun to process Hurricane Helene 13 days prior were hit yet again.

The direction of Milton’s eyewall kept the highest storm surge out of Tampa Bay — which officials had for days said could pose a catastrophic, once-in-a-century threat and prompted one of the largest evacuations in Florida’s history. The storm still left a trail of destruction.

The hurricane’s march across central Florida left at least 16 dead. A day after landfall, more than three million customers in the state were without power. In St. Petersburg, gusts of more than 100 mph pummeled homes, toppled a 500-foot crane and shredded the roof of Tropicana Field. Tampa’s MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre lost its roof, too.

Dozens of tornadoes touched down further inland, destroying an estimated 150 homes.

Near the place Hurricane Milton made landfall, like so many of the Gulf Coast barrier islands from Sarasota to Clearwater, it was hard to tell where the damage from one storm ended and the ruin of another began.

In downtown St. Petersburg, the toppled construction crane left a gaping hole in an office building that houses several businesses, including the Tampa Bay Times. The crane fell from the Residences at 400 Central, the 46-story skyscraper being built across from the Times’ office, as the storm pummeled the region.

Alarms blared in the predawn darkness. Shattered glass blanketed the street. Smoke billowed from the wreck into the fuel-scented air. By dawn Thursday, dozens of onlookers gathered behind the police tape. The city said in a news release that no injuries have been reported at the site.

Howling winds obliterated the roof of Tropicana Field, allowing heavy rains to soak a ballfield never designed to see a night sky.

Matthew Covello of Feather Sound, whose family has Rays season tickets, watched from a parking garage as the roof shred. “My baby!” he shouted as pieces blew away. He woke up on Thursday, his 17th birthday, to pick up a piece as a keepsake.

Near the place Hurricane Milton made landfall, like so many of the Gulf Coast barrier islands from Sarasota to Clearwater, it was hard to tell where the damage from one storm ended and the ruin of another began. At Harbor Lights Club, a mobile home park on Long Bayou in St. Petersburg, the damage of two back-to-back hurricanes blended into one indistinguishable mess.

At a mobile park in Ruskin, Abel Bautista arrived home to find his rental ruined.

“You work hard all day to have your things, and the next day, nothing,” said the a 36-year-old Mexican migrant who works in construction. He evacuated Wednesday morning with a cousin to shelter.

“If we hadn’t done that,” he added, “our families in Mexico would be mourning us now.”

President Joe Biden said on Thursday that over 80,000 Floridians had safely sheltered from the storm. Still, around Tampa Bay, first responders mobilized to pluck people from soaked homes and swallowed streets.

In Hillsborough, deputies pulled a 14-year-old from flood waters. They also rescued 135 people from Great American Assisted Living Facility off Fowler Avenue, including wheelchair-bound residents in waist-deep water. Much of the thoroughfare was still submerged Thursday afternoon, prompting Mayor Jane Castor to call it “Lake Fowler.”

In Clearwater, law enforcement retrieved about 430 people from an apartment complex in what Sheriff Bob Gualtieri described as “the most significant water rescue” he’d ever witnessed in Pinellas. As water covered cars and creeped higher, first-floor residents were taken in by their upstairs neighbors. With an estimated 90% of the complex’s 2,000 residents thought to have stayed home, Gualtieri was bracing for fatalities.

“I’m glad I was wrong,” he said. There were none.

While most areas around Tampa Bay were spared the worst of the storm’s surge, heavy rains doused the area overnight. Around 17 inches of rain fell in parts of Pinellas and Hillsborough counties in just six hours, prompting the National Weather Service to declare a rare flash flood emergency.

In Progress Village, where drainage has posed a problem for decades, Milton’s staggering rainfall overtopped mailboxes.

Across the bay in North Kenwood, a St. Petersburg neighborhood far from evacuation zones, residents said sights of waterlogged homes and totaled cars were a first.

About 3-feet of water surged into homes. The area borders a retention pond, typically drained during storms. This time, it spilled over.

“In the 42 years I’ve been living here, I have never seen that happen,” said Gary Imhoff, 67. Residents are hungry for answers.

“This is not supposed to happen here,” said Jenica Ellenberger, who thought wind was the only risk to her relatively high-ground community. “Something went terribly wrong, and I want to know what happened.”

Though obvious signs of damage grabbed much of the attention, Milton’s wreckage could be found in isolated bits and pieces — a road sign askew here, a twisted awning there.

Woven into the tapestry, though, were threads of good fortune.

In Gulfport and Shore Acres, the mounds of ruined furniture and appliances that were feared to become projectiles still lined curbs. In Tampa, the Jackson House, once a boarding home for the Black community during the era of segregation, remarkably still stood, surviving yet another storm despite its deterioration.

Further south, Linda and Dick Bryskiewicz, said they were the only residents of their Davis Islands condo building who stayed. Dick, 81, just had surgery and couldn’t sit for extended periods in a car.

Instead, Linda, 75, baked 10 dozen Italian cookies so they’d have something to eat while listening to the howling wind. But as they scoped out the exterior Thursday morning, they texted good news to their neighbors: the water barely reached the ground-floor parking garage.

“We are so lucky,” she said.

In St. Petersburg, gusts knocked over the decades-old pine in Kim and Rob Westerfield’s front yard. It missed their van, parked on the street, by a couple inches. Thursday morning, a neighbor pitched in, helping them hack away at its trunk to clear a path.

“We’re a community coming together,” Rob said over the roar of his chainsaw.

Times staff writers Max Chesnes, Ian Hodgson, Michaela Mulligan, Emily L. Mahoney, Jack Evans, Jack Prator, Colleen Wright, Zachary T. Sampson, Christopher O’Donnell, Juan-Carlos Chavez, Sharon Kennedy Wynne, Shauna Muckle, Lauren Peace and Marc Topkin contributed to this story.

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