As families stack up mounds of memories on the curb, including furniture and photos, commercial junk haulers tell the ABC Action News I-Team that the county is turning away storm debris at its main dump site.
Right now, there is one location for hauling companies to drop off what Helene destroyed.
Commercial haulers lined up at Angelo’s Recycling in Largo on Tuesday after learning that, as of 6 a.m., they could no longer take storm debris to the Pinellas County Solid Waste Disposal in St. Petersburg.
Caitlin Mceleny, one of the owners of Done Rite Hauling, a family business her parents started more than 20 years ago, said they have never been as busy as they are now in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
“Absolutely not, it’s unbelievable,” Mceleny said. “We just want to help the community get back to normal and, you know, help all of these families that lost everything.”
Done Rite Hauling, located in Seminole, primarily serves Pinellas County.
WFTS “Our phone are ringing off the hook, we came in Friday morning not realizing that we had 100+ online orders that were ordered throughout the night and we just were nonstop answering the phone, taking calls, not realizing the severity of how everything was. Now Friday and Saturday and Monday we were able to dump at the county, the lines were obviously very long, but I mean it’s just been more than we can handle,” Mceleny told the I-Team.