Hurricane Irma, Fires, Neo-Nazis & The Loss Of Too Many People
Crazy weather, fires blazing their way through forests and over roads, neo Nazi controversy and contentious budget battles.
Welcome to New Tampa!
While those stories all sound like incidents happening around the country you might catch while watching CNN, they were, in fact, local news stories in New Tampa in 2017.
(Spoiler alert: Most of the good news is in our cover story.)
Hurricane Irma might have been the biggest story of the year, especially when you consider the number of people who fled or hunkered down in shelters in anticipation of the Category 5 storm that approached Florida in mid-September. Some storm models had the hurricane slicing right through Tampa Palms.
Windows were boarded as plywood become a hot, then scarce, commodity. Water flew off the shelves at every area store, days before the storm actually blasted through the area Sept. 20-21.
As it turned out, Irma was more bark than bite when she finally showed up in New Tampa. We’re thankful the biggest story of the year wasn’t bigger.
Fires!
On the other end of the weather scale, dry conditions and a lack of rain in May led to three brush fires that burned more than 200 acres in Flatwoods Park, and led to the temporary closure of I-75 due to smoky conditions that spread as far as Lakeland. Thankfully the fire was contained before any damage could be done to nearby homes and businesses.
Another fire, this one intentionally set in February by an arsonist at the Daarus Salaam Mosque on Morris Bridge Rd., failed to do its intended damage, thanks to alarm sprinklers, but still left members without a place to worship for a few weeks. Cypress Pointe Community Church opened its doors to its neighbors until the mosque was suitable for worship.
At our press time, no one had been arrested for setting the fire.
New Tampa Neo-Nazis?
Yes, you read that right.
In what had to be the craziest story of the year, self-proclaimed neo Nazi Devon Arthurs shot both of his roommates to death because, he claimed, they had disrespected his recent conversion to Islam.
He then held three hostages at the Green Planet Smoke Shop on Amberly Dr. before surrendering to police, who he led back to the Hamptons in Tampa Palms apartment where his dead roommates were.
A third roommate, Brandon Russell, was there when police arrived. In his bedroom were Nazi and white supremacist propaganda and a framed photo of Timothy McVeigh, who was executed for killing 168 people in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
Russell admitted to being a member of Atomwaffen, an active neo-Nazi hate group, and had enough explosives to make a bomb stored in the apartment’s garage. He was arrested on federal explosives charges.
Taken Too Soon…
Hailey Acierno
New Tampa also experienced its share of sadness.
In April, the body of local teen Hailey Acierno was found in Flatwoods Park, two miles from her Arbor Greene home, after a 10-day search that rallied help from all over the New Tampa area.
Hailey may be gone, but her spirit continues to live on. Her parents, Chris and Lisa, have created Hailey’s Voice of Hope to help other families deal with mental illness, as they say their daughter did.
In September, former Wharton football standout Joel Miller passed away unexpectedly, shocking many in the Wildcats community.
A running back, Miller ran for more than 2,500 yards his last two seasons at Wharton, and as a senior won Hillsborough County’s Golden Helmet Award.
Doug Wall (right)
And in November, Doug Wall, co-founder of the New Tampa Players (NTP) community theater group, passed away after battling pancreatic cancer.
The Live Oak resident championed a cultural center in New Tampa for two decades, in the hopes it could provide a home for the NTP and a center for local artists, but never got to quite see it come to fruition.
New Tampa and Wesley Chapel residents whose homes, possessions or businesses suffered damage or loss as a result of Hurricane Irma may be surprised that the Small Business Administration (SBA) can help them get back in business or help them be made whole again.
The SBA is providing assistance with low-interest disaster loans for Florida residents and businesses in the 48 counties covered by U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s disaster declaration covering areas affected by Hurricane Irma. Hillsborough and Pasco are among the Florida counties eligible for federal assistance.
Homeowners can apply for low-interest loans up to $200,000 to repair or replace damage to their primary residence and along with renters, can apply for up to $40,000 to cover personal property, including vehicles. SBA homeowner disaster loan rates are advertised as being as low as 1.75 percent with terms up to 30 years.
Help For Businesses, Too
When it comes to assisting businesses and private nonprofit organizations of any size, the SBA disaster loans address not only physical damage to assets such as real estate, infrastructure and inventory, but economic loss as well. Owners can apply for up to $2 million for physical loss and $2 million to cover working capital.
Those loans, called Economic Injury Disaster Loans, are available even if no physical property damage has occurred.
The SBA is advertising loan rates as low as 3.305 percent for businesses and as low as 2.5 percent for non-profit organizations.
The SBA may not be the first place people might think of for homeowner or renter disaster assistance, so public affairs specialists like Mary Gipson and Laura Wages have been dispatched from the agency’s Disaster Assistance Field Operations Office in Atlanta to spread the word about the resource through local media, including a recent stop at the Neighborhood News office.
Gipson says providing disaster assistance is part of the job. “In times of presidential or other federal agency-declared disaster, we make loans to businesses of all sizes, nonprofit organizations, homeowners and renters,” she says.
Applications for physical property damage loans need to be filed by Thursday, November 9, and the deadline to return economic injury applications is June 11, 2018.
According to Gipson, if you think you have a claim, apply sooner, not later.
“Do not delay when completing your SBA application,” she says.
The SBA loaned $40,900 in Tampa in 2016, with no reported loans in Wesley Chapel, according to data on its website, sba.gov, where you can find more information and apply online.
You can call (800) 659-2955 (or {800} 877-8339 (for deaf and hard of hearing applicants) or call Mary at (202) 579-3172.
If you prefer to do business in person, there is an SBA Disaster Recovery Center serving Hillsborough and Pasco county residents 36 minutes south of County Line Rd. and Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd.,at Hillsborough Community College at the Regent (6437 Watson Rd. in Riverview). It is open daily from 8 a.m. — 8 p.m., according to the SBA website. Applicants can get assistance filling out the form and have their application reviewed before submitting it.
Scenes similar to this one in nearby Dade City were common across Pasco County, although Hurricane Irma inflicted less damage on Wesley Chapel than many other areas. (Photo: Brandi Whitehurst, PIO for Santa Rosa County Emergency Management.)
In the days leading up to the arrival of Hurricane Irma, one of the most devastating storms to ever threaten Florida, the frenzy was real.
Bottled water, plywood and food flew off the shelves at local stores, days before Irma touched down. Roads were clogged with evacuees heading for higher ground or, as the storm got closer, local shelters. Gasoline was practically drained from every station from Miami to Atlanta, GA.
“We were scared. Everyone was scared,’’ said Meadow Pointe III resident Inelia Semonick. “Waiting for it made everyone nervous.”
The waiting, as it turned out, was the hardest part for most Wesley Chapel residents.
After making landfall and devastating the Florida Keys and Naples as a Category 5 storm, Irma moved up the Florida peninsula and lost much of her power, hitting the Tampa Bay area as a Category 2 hurricane. It still delivered a blast of howling winds, rain and the snap, crackle and pop of tree branches breaking off, but did minimal damage to most ofour area, although plenty of clean-up remains and flooding continues to plague the east and west sides of the county a week after the storm.
“This is not over, we’ve got a long way to go,’’ said Kevin Guthrie, Pasco’s assistant county administrator for public safety. “I told our teams, when we go into recovery mode, that’s when we usually have problems with the community and neighbors. We are always judged by the recovery, not always by the response.”
The 26 shelters throughout Pasco County were able to release some of their 24,100 occupants the morning after the storm. Residents returned home to find trees uprooted, fences down and the power out.
While most power in Wesley Chapel was restored, even as the Neighborhood News went to press on Sept. 15, there were still hundreds of local residents still waiting.
The four power companies that service Pasco County — Duke Energy, Tampa Electric Company, Withlacoochee River Electric Cooperative and Sumter Electric Cooperative — reported a high of 217,382 addresses without power, out of 261,000 total addresses, or 83 percent.
As of Sept. 14, that number was down to 51,847, or just 19 percent.
“While Hurricane Irma could have been much worse,’’ Pasco County administrator Dan Biles said, “she still left quite a mess across the county.”
(l.-r.) Meadow Pointe III residents Javier Casillas, Ernie Rodriguez, Gary Suris and Nick Casillas begin cutting up the second of three trees they removed on Beardsley Dr. (Photo courtesy of Inelia Semonick).
The county says that, at the peak of storm damage, 749 roads were closed, but that number was down to 126 by the end of last week.
County crews leapt into action to meet the demands of residents across Pasco.
“Awe-inspiring efforts,’’ said Biles, citing the work of the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office (PCSO), the Pasco School District, local charities like the Salvation Army, the county’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and others. “Our partners throughout the community have really helped us through this and allowed to get us where we are today.”
The community also has been lauded for its response. As residents returned to homes, or opened their doors Monday morning to assess the damage, many immediately went to work checking on their neighbors and lending plenty of helping hands.
A Few Local Stories
Robert Castillo II rode out the storm in Westbrook Estates with his fiancé, Brittany Velez, and 10-month-old son Robert III. Castillo said that having a newborn to care for heightened the anxiety of the storm.
Like many, he was relieved when he opened his front door Monday morning.
“The anticipation was crazy,’’ said the Wesley Chapel realtor, “but we didn’t get the full brunt of the storm by any means.”
Robert turned to helping his parents, who live in Zephyrhills and had a tree downed, as well as neighbors who needed to clean up and dispose of sandbags.
In Meadow Pointe III, Ernie Rodriguez joined neighbors Gary Saris and Javier and Nick Casillas in clearing a fallen tree from busy Beardsley Dr., using a chainsaw to cut the limbs and move them to the side so traffic could pass. A few yards down the road was another tree, and after that, another tree.
“We did enough to clear the road,’’ Rodriguez said, who then returned home to check on an elderly neighbor. “That’s what people do, right? They help out in times like this.”
Many others across the area joined in, swapping generators, providing their homes to those without power who might just need a shower, and teaming up to clear away debris. Local businesses rushed to re-open so power-free people could eat, with many offering ice to their fellow residents.
District 2 Pasco County Commissioner Mike Moore, who lives in Seven Oaks, said he was moved by the outpouring of support in the area he represents.
“It’s been a joy to watch how the community has come together and answered the call,’’ said Moore, who used social media to rally people to Wesley Chapel High to help load wheelchairs, beds, oxygen tanks and other equipment into trucks to help those with special needs, especially the elderly, return to their homes.
“I’ve been getting calls, texts and messages on Facebook, from people asking what can I do, what do you need?,’’ Moore said five days after the storm ventured north of our area. “It’s never ending.”
Wesley Chapel Nissan, which already was organizing a drive to collect supplies for Hurricane Harvey victims in Texas before Irma hit, ended up diverting a large portion of those non-perishable foodstuffs, water and more to the National Guard soldiers who were stationed on S.R. 54 in the parking lot of the former Target store near the Suncoast Pkwy.
“We had local people in need,” said WC Nissan’s Troy Stevenson. “And, so many people pitched in to help,” including Comm. Moore and Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce president Hope Allen.
For the most part, there seems to be relief that the most dangerous storm — and certainly the most hyped storm — in more than a decade seems to have only grazed an area that was forecasted at various times to be directly in the path of Irma’s eye.
The Norlands, who live in Quail Hollow, didn’t realize just how much damage Hurricane Irma did to their home until the day after the storm. (Photo: Cristy Norland)
But, the relief and rosy post-hurricane outlooks are hard to read for some residents, especially those in the Quail Hollow and Angus Valley areas of Wesley Chapel, which traditionally experience flooding after storms.
In their preparation for Irma, Cristy and Josh Norland, who run the Bacon Boss food truck and live on Quail Hollow Blvd. just past Cypress Creek, piled sandbags two feet high to protect the home they rent from expected flooding. Inside, Cristy put her more valuable and treasured items, like her dining room table, up on bricks.
The Norlands, including daughters Bria (13), Cassi (11) and Anni (7), weathered the storm at her mother’s house 10 minutes away, and were surprised that the storm passed by without doing nearly the damage they had expected.
When they returned to their home the next morning, however, their relief was quickly washed away by what they saw.
“I just about a had a heart attack when I turned the corner and saw what is now a lake,’’ Cristy says. “It was like a bad scene from a movie. There was water all around the house, two feet deep. I knew right away the sandbags hadn’t done any good.”
Inside, however, the water was only two inches deep, and hadn’t yet breached the surface above the bricks, providing the Norlands with some relief.
“I thought, ‘Thank God we had the precaution to put some things on bricks,’’ says Cristy, who returned to her mother’s house to call her landlord.
When she returned to her house four hours later, another shock: the water in Cypress Creek had continued to rise. The water was up to her thighs in the driveway, it had risen past her windows, and those bricks she had perched important items on? “Comical,’’ she says.
She adds that she saw tadpoles swim by and earthworms float through as she waded through her kitchen. While the food truck was safe, moved before the storm to her mother’s house, the Norlands run their business out of their home and stored much of their commercial equipment in the garage.
The waters, which Cristy says “turned little old Cypress Creek into a raging river,” were devastating.
“A total loss,’’ she said. Her church helped them salvage what they could, but Cristy says ¾ of the house went to the dump.
The Thursday after the storm (Sept. 14), the Bacon Bus food truck had its first gig in two weeks in Lakeland.
On the other end of the weather scale, dry conditions and a lack of rain in May led to three brush fires that burned more than 200 acres in Flatwoods Park, and led to the temporary closure of I-75 due to smoky conditions that spread as far as Lakeland. Thankfully the fire was contained before any damage could be done to nearby homes and businesses.
In what had to be the craziest story of the year, self-proclaimed neo Nazi Devon Arthurs shot both of his roommates to death because, he claimed, they had disrespected his recent conversion to Islam.
