St. Pete officials talk Helene, one year later, and show off high-water vehicles

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — St. Pete Fire Rescue says its new high-water vehicles will allow for faster and safer vehicles for when the next hurricane hits the area.

City officials showed off the new vehicles on Friday. The city bought three for $300,000.

That brings the total fleet to four vehicles, which means dump trucks from other departments won’t have to be borrowed from other departments for high water rescues.

“These vehicles are true game changers. Designed specifically to meet the unique needs of our community in high water conditions,” said Fire Chief Keith Watts.

During Helene, 430 residents were rescued.

The exhaust on the new vehicles is snorkeled out, allowing the trucks to drive through four feet of floodwater.

“This investment directly addresses the lessons of Hurricane Helene, ensuring that … when our city faces rising waters again, your St. Petersburg Fire Rescue is more capable, more flexible and more resilient,” Watts said.

The city calls it a significant upgrade and a much safer and stable way to transfer residents.

Mayor Ken Welch talked about the city’s progress one year after Helene.

“To date, we’ve secured approximately $40 million in reimbursements from FEMA,” Welch said. “We received reimbursements for projects that included debris removal, emergency protective services and other actions taken from the hurricanes.

“In addition to our FEMA reimbursements, we’ve received approximately $13.9 million in insurance payments to date. Today, that’s a total of approximately $54 million secured to help our city recover.”

Helene revealed problems with the city’s infrastructure, with parts of the sewer system shut down with little notice. The permitting office was backed up big time, and many residents got unusually high water bills. Welch said the city is committed to fixing the water bill problem.

“We think we’ve got a handle going forward and also the changes that we made in the code with city council’s support give us a much more flexibility in dealing on those one-off cases that seem illogical,” he said.

Welch added that the city launched the Sunrise Saint Pete program with $159.8 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The program will support housing, infrastructure and community recovery, the mayor said.

He also talked about repair efforts at Tropicana Field. The roof of the stadium was torn off when Hurricane Milton arrived, just two weeks after Helene.

“We anticipate that the roof installation will be completed by the end of the year and we’ll start on turf installation and other major interior work at that time,” Welch said. “And again, we anticipate the entire project will be completed by April 2026.”