Why hasn’t my Hurricane Ian debris been picked up yet? It’s a big job.

More than a month after Hurricane Ian, Tampa Bay bears little trace of the storm that threatened it before it devastated southwestern Florida.but driving around As you stroll around your neighborhood, you may see reminders in the form of brushes stacked on the curb.

Some local authorities have picked up the fallen limbs, but work continues elsewhere, although the city says you shouldn’t see bush piles in Largo or Clearwater.

Although Ian left Tampa Bay mostly unharmed, local officials say he knocked over many trees and limbs, requiring a lot of cleanup work. And many of the private contractors used by the Bay Area government do so after the storm heads south and demand for their services rises.

In Hillsboro County, officials originally expected the cleanup to be completed around November 6, 30 days after it began. County officials are now facing more debris than expected, they say now It will be extended for at least another 4 weeks.

By October 31, two private contractors and county staff had collected 277,200 cubic yards of debris, said Travis Barnes, sustainable materials manager for the county’s solid waste division. The county initially estimated that the contractor could recover 300,000 to 400,000 yards within his 30 days, but now decontamination will continue until November. Barnes said it could be longer in the eastern and southern parts of the county.

In St. Petersburg, city officials have already collected about 83,000 cubic yards of plant debris, forming a small brown pile in the overflow parking lot of Maximo Park.

Plans to finish work within five weeks of the storm are on schedule, said Mike Jefferis, the city’s leisure services administrator. The cleanup passed his 3-minute completion mark last week and Jefferis is expected to be finished by the middle of next week.

According to Jefferis, the remaining piles of debris fall into two categories. In the days after the storm, many were forced out after the city carried out its initial “clean-up”. Usually the city takes care of his first three days of storm cleanup, after which contractors come along. But those same contractors were busy with Post Ian’s work in southwest Florida, so the city gathered its own employees from the Sanitation, Water Resources, Parks and Recreation departments to systematically reclaim 60 square miles. It needed to be cleaned. process still in progress.

“Our staff work very hard 12 hours a day. We work around the clock on cleaning,” says Jefferis. “I’ve never wiped out a city so fast.”

The rest of the pile is breaking city rules by mixing storm debris with drywall debris, old sofas, new lawn waste, and more.

“There were even people clearing out their garages and stacking everything up there, thinking this was their chance to get a free pickup,” he said.

Like St. Petersburg, Tampa still has work to do, but it’s on track. The city has removed 74,000 cubic yards of debris and must complete it within his self-imposed 60-day timeframe, said solid waste chief Larry Washington. .

Whether your city or county has completed debris collection or started picking up debris in the first place depends on where you live. Pinellas County told people in unincorporated areas to dump as little debris as possible into the trash. Above that, residents are responsible for going to county solid waste disposal facilities.

The city of Clearwater, which collected the debris, said cleanup was complete on October 14. The city of Largo completed cleanup on Oct. 21, a spokeswoman said.

A spokeswoman said Pasco County didn’t have enough debris to warrant special collection, but storm debris fees were waived at solid waste dump sites for about a week after the storm. rice field.

Times staff writers Charlie Frago and Barbara Behrent contributed to this report.