"Everyone’s still gone."
With her first child due any day, Reagan Woo Olsen and her husband loaded a neighbor’s kayak last October with a couple of trash bags full of baby clothes and diapers.
Hurricane Milton had flooded their Forest Hills home after city pumps and generators meant to keep the neighborhood dry failed. The northern Tampa community, which was considered to have 0.2% or less chance of flooding, saw water as high as eight feet swamp its streets.
Now, nine months later, the Olsens are back in their home — with help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency but not the city of Tampa, which denied them financial assistance.v Olsen’s neighbors are trickling back into the neighborhood, but across the street and next door, houses remain empty. Out of a group chat of around 50 households, only about half of them have returned, the president of the Forest Hills Neighborhood Association said.
A lack of government disaster relief aid has left neighborhoods like Forest Hills with empty homes as residents chose to sell or save up to begin repairs.
Read more at the Tampa Bay Times