Many trees and branches have already been cleared off the roads in the south Pinellas beach community of Gulfport.
But hurricane winds and a deluge of rain Wednesday from Hurricane Milton mean the whole city is still without power.
Part of the beach has been eroded away.
And Thursday morning, a few blocks down the shoreline, water gushed up and sidewalks were twisted in Veteran’s Park, because of a water main break.
“Well, with all the, all the water, all the rain, we had it undermined the roadway. The roadway collapsed and it broke the six-inch water main down there. So we should, we should have that restored within the hour,” said Tom Nicholls, the public works director with the City of Gulfport.
On Thursday, St. Petersburg announced that it had restored water service to its customers, which includes Gulfport. But a boil-water order remains.
But before that announcement, Nicholls admitted that in Gulfport, “our major impact right now is the city of Saint Petersburg is shut off all water to the City of Gulfport. So I’m even surprised we’re losing water out of that six-inch main. But, we gotta wait for St. Pete to get their water system back up and then get it tested so we can get our residents back on, on water.”
St. Pete has also brought all of its sewage treatment plants back online.
But before that, it was impacting Gulport. “Now that they shut the water off, we’re not sending anything to them anyway. But, both of our lift stations held up. But we did try to minimize what we did send to St. Pete knowing the troubles that they were having,” Nicholls said Thursday morning.
Part of Gulfport Beach next to the Casino — where the beach volleyball courts stood until Wednesday — is eroded.
“It was the same thing all the rain that we had and then when the water went back out, it just undermined all the sand and took it back out to sea, Nicholls said. “So we got quite a bit of sand that we’re missing and erosion underneath the walkways and the casino pad.”
Nicholls adds that elsewhere in Gulfport, there are “just a lot of trees down. A lot of power lines down. People should stay out of the area, as everybody’s messaging out. We got crews coming in, we have National Guard coming in to help us start clearing and we hope to have everything underway within the hour.”
As dawn broke Thursday morning, hours after the worst impacts of Hurricane Milton bore down on Pinellas County, WMNF assessed the situation along the downtown Gulfport waterfront with the co-owner of The Gabber newspaper, Cathy Salustri.
“It was wild. I live on the north side of town [the beach is on the south] and driving in, there were so many down trees. I wasn’t sure what we were gonna find and coming down Beach Boulevard [the city’s main street, which runs perpendicular to the beach],” Salustri said. “It was kind of amazing because I didn’t see any trees on businesses. I didn’t see where any businesses were any more damaged than they were the day before.”
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