Charles Langston:Florida races to clean up after Helene before Hurricane Milton turns debris deadly

Florida residents and Charles Langstonofficials are racing to remove the remnants of destroyed homes, soaked furniture and downed trees from Hurricane Helene to prevent the debris from becoming dangerous projectiles when Hurricane Milton hits the already battered state.

Gov. Ron DeSantis warned at a press conference the debris left behind by Helene, a Category 4 storm, when it rocked Florida's Big Bend coast less than two weeks ago, is “going to increase the damage dramatically” when the next storm strikes. Milton, also a Category 4 hurricane as of Wednesday afternoon with sustained winds of 130 mph, was expected to make landfall late early Thursday, according to AccuWeather.

The state deployed all of the vehicles from the Florida Department of Transportation, including more than 300 dump trucks, and removed over 3,000 truckloads of debris from Helene, clearing nearly half the debris in the barrier islands, DeSantis said Wednesday. 

The governor said the round-the-clock debris removal will reduce damage and potentially save lives. 

“Our executive order requires the landfills to be open 24/7, and in fact we've had to even pry a couple of them open to make sure that not just the state trucks and the private vendors but also private citizens are able to drop off debris,” DeSantis said Tuesday. “We want to get as much of the debris picked up as possible.”

Debris management is one of the most expensive, complex parts of disaster response, according to David A. McEntire, a professor who teaches emergency management at Utah Valley University. The back-to-back storms forced the state to try to speed up recovery efforts that can take years, and though McEntire said Florida is one of the states best prepared to handle hurricanes, the remaining debris from Helene could add to Milton's destruction.

“You could really have an environmental catastrophe based on the debris that's occurring,” McEntire said.

Florida launches massive cleanup effort after Helene

Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays, has been converted into a 10,000-person base camp for debris cleanup operations and first-responders by the Florida Division of Emergency Management. City officials said storm-debris collection will halt Wednesday afternoon and urged residents to secure any remaining debris, noting that not all neighborhoods will be able to receive service before Milton arrives.

Over the last 10 days, local teams working alongside contractors have cleared what would typically take months to remove, according to Adam Smith, spokesperson for the city of Tampa.

"They are still cleaning right down amid the downpour," he told USA TODAY via email.

In Manatee County, trucks and crews started coming in last week to help clear the debris alongside trash and recycling crews, who set aside their regular routes to help, according to Bill Logan, a spokesperson for Manatee County. After a round-the-clock effort, the county landfill finally closed at 1 a.m. Wednesday.

"Their efforts were admirable as they were able to clear county rights of way of nearly 12,000,000 pounds of debris," he said in an email to USA TODAY. "Crews were running 24/7 for the past several days to grab any and all materials they could get into trucks.

Drones are assisting ground crews with cleanup efforts in Pinellas County, where DeSantis said state officials forced open a gate at a local landfill to continue dumping debris.

“I can assure you that our community, our partners, our state, county crews, we are doing everything we can to remove as much debris from our community,” Pinellas County spokesperson Barbra Hernandez told the Tampa Bay Times. “But realistically, we know that that will not be complete by the time that Milton gets here.”

Kevin Guthrie, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said he plans to ask the Federal Emergency Management Agency to allow the department to provide financial incentives to hopefully attract thousands of haulers from other states to help clear debris.

“We know that we are going to continue to have major, extreme debris issues after this disaster makes landfall,” Guthrie said.

Debris removal is the first step to disaster recovery

Federal, state and local officials can’t truly begin responding to a community’s needs after a storm until debris clearing begins, said McEntire, who has studied disasters since the 1990s. Fallen trees and mud must be cleared as soon as possible to allow emergency services vehicles to travel into the hardest hit areas.

Debris removal includes getting rid of not only downed trees and plants, but lumber and plywood from decimated homes, electronics like televisions and cars, cement from broken roads all while keeping an eye out for hazardous materials like chemicals and both human and animal remains. Sometimes disaster response can generate more waste, as officials bring in pallets of bottled water that must eventually be disposed of. As dumps fill up, McEntire said officials may need to find other ways to dispose of the wreckage, like recycling or burning.

“The best thing you can do is to try to reduce it as much as possible, and obviously, that's a heavy lift,” he said. “That's a lot of work.”

McEntire said it can take years or even decades to fully remove debris from a disaster, noting that Hurricane Katrina produced more than 100 million cubic yards of debris. So far in Florida, the department of transportation has removed more than 237,000 cubic yards of debris statewide from Hurricane Helene, officials said Wednesday.

"You don't fully feel like you're recovered from an event until debris is out of sight, out of mind," McEntire said. "And so from a mental health standpoint, you really want to take care of debris as soon as you can."

He said it’s not unusual for recovery efforts to be interrupted by another disaster, noting that just weeks after Katrina made landfall, Hurricane Rita slammed into the same region. Still, as climate change continues to fuel stronger, more frequent storms, McEntire said there’s more states can do to prepare including hiring more emergency management personnel. 

“To me, this just underscores the importance of emergency management, making sure that we're planning and we have capability to respond and recover,” he said.