#pinellas county

[unteriors]

Gulf Boulevard, St. Pete Beach, Florida.

[sincosma]

Well, I guess I make big posts on Tumblr now about hurricanes because WHAT THE FUCK.

So, I live in the Tampa Bay Area, specifically in Pinellas County, which is the most densely populated county in the state of Florida. We haven't had a direct hit from a hurricane in over 100 years. And despite that, Helene completely devastated our county with 5 to 8 feet of storm surge.

I have friends and coworkers living in hotels and other people's homes who have lost everything. Our barrier islands reek with raw sewage and dead marine life. As I speak, they are still trying to remove the FEET of toxic sand on the barrier islands that the storm surge pushed inland. There were 12 deaths in my county from that storm surge. It's the worst hurricane damage our area has ever received in the modern era. And that was from a storm that stayed 100 miles offshore.

Hurricane Milton is currently heading our way. Right now, models are showing a potential landfall in the Tampa Bay Area as a cat 3, maybe 4, hurricane. We're still struggling to recover from Helene, and now we're right back in the crosshairs. My point here is that things can change very quickly. If you live on the west coast of Florida, please prepare and please stay weather aware.

If evacuations are called in your area, please spread the word to your neighbors, especially if they are elderly, have disabilities, live in poverty, or have other evacuation challenges. CHECK ON YOUR NEIGHBORS. I cannot stress this enough. If you live near vulnerable people, check on them and talk to them about their plans if evacuations are called. Check with your county website to see what services are available for evacuation and shelters.

Stay safe, fellow west coast Florida friends. <3

[arctic-hands]

'We've got a problem': Sheriff scolds residents for ignoring Helene evacuation order

A Florida sheriff admonished residents who 'aren't listening' to a local hurricane evacuation order.

“We’ve got a problem, and the problem is that way too many people in Zone A aren’t listening,” said Bob Gualtieri, the sheriff in Pinellas County, which encompasses Clearwater and St. Petersburg, in a Thursday morning news conference. “We’ve been out there this morning, there’s just way too many people in the area.” Other local and state officials, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, warned residents to leave vulnerable areas before the massive storm unleashes a barrage of life-threatening conditions, including flooding rains and winds potentially as high as 131 to 155 mph Thursday night.

"If you're in an evacuation zone or you've been told to evacuate, you do have time to do it now – so do it. But don't wait another six hours, seven hours," DeSantis said early Thursday. Gualtieri said that while the county won’t face much danger from rain and wind, the barrier islands and low-lying coastal areas face 5 to 8 feet of storm surge. “This is dangerous. No question about it and it’s not something we’ve seen recently,” he said. “They’ve got to get out, and there’s going to reach a point where you’re on your own because we’re not going to get our people killed because you don’t want to listen to what we’re saying.” While nearly every county along the western coast of Florida has ordered evacuations, four of them, including Franklin,  Taylor, Liberty and Wakulla have ordered all residents in the county to leave. "This will not be a survivable event for those in coastal or low lying areas," Wakulla County Sheriff's Office Sheriff Jared Miller said in a Facebook post. "There has not been a storm of this magnitude to hit Wakulla in recorded history." A.J. Smith, the sheriff in Franklin County, said he's never seen as many residents evacuate before a hurricane as he has in recent days. He said, however, there were still people who decided to stay for various reasons. "I've said publicly that when the storm comes in and the weather's so bad that the first responders can't get out, you're on your own because we can't get to you," he said, adding: "If I wasn't sheriff, trust me – I wouldn't be here."

If you chose to stay or can't evacuate in time, might want to write down your information in sharpie on your arm so you can be identified if help can't come

[eopederson]

Phantasy Land, Tarpon Springs, Florida, 2012.

[gh0stsp1d3r]

Hello, I have personally put together some gofundme’s and donation links for people in my home city, people who have been hit hard and still are struggling with the storms after effects. Please share, or donate if you are able. I will be updating this list as much as possible. If you want a link to be shared onto this, I would love to support you and your family and friends (:

Hurricane relief fund

areas like John’s pass and the barrier islands and beaches are where most of us grew up, where we all could gather without a worry in the world, where people with nothing could put down roots in their dreams for starting a business.

Big corporations will never care about the little people, and we are truly seeing this problem now. Your donation will mean more to these people than you realize or know.

Help restore lives on barrier islands.

Restoring hope to John’s pass.

Donate to seabird seaside sanctuary.

Help elderly victim after hurricane Helene’s impact.

Urgent aid for seniors affected by hurricane Helene.

Help heather with funds after Huricane Helene.

Support Eric’s family in their time of need.

Support Lexi’s family in their time of need.

Here’s some for places like Appalachia, Georgia, and Tennessee as well, where they got affected terribly. My heart goes out to everyone there.

Don’t forget the backroads.

Raising funds for those in Appalachia affected by Helene.

Help my family survive: water and power crisis in Appalachia

Help Appalachia

Support hope and resilience in Appalachia.

Support East Tennessee community in this time of need.

Help Georgia marine veterans rebuild lives

Help bring aid to victims

Volunteering if you’re near any area affected is also great ! This weekend i flew out to go volunteer with Keep Pinellas Beautiful, some family businesses, along with overall helping my community and giving back. And it makes a change, whether you believe it or not.

When I entered the beach for the first time to do a cleanup, it was devastating. I talked to some smaller business owners over there as well, most of them thinking they will have to demolish their places completely because it’s too much.

[transfloridaresources]

Pinellas County has opened cooling stations in areas where residents remain without power following Hurricane Helene. These stations will pr

Pinellas County locations to cool off & charge phones if you're without power from Hurricane Helene. Open from Sept 28, 2024 until further notice.

Please add your own if you have other resources for hurricane relief around Florida!

[suzannetownsend]

Meddling: The woman bringing women’s local history into focus in St. Pete

Jessy Breckenridge describes the research she did for the St. Petersburg Museum of History exhibit Meddling: The Women Who Built St. Pete. 

The St. Petersburg Museum of History is strikingly modest for its downtown location. Plain white and undergoing some construction, the museum is nested at the base of the St. Pete Pier across from the Museum of Fine Arts and houses some gems of this peninsula’s great history. One of its latest exhibitions is Meddling: The Women Who Built St. Pete, curated by Jessy Breckenridge. “It started off as a bet,” she said. She grinned as she explained that she’s actually the archives and collections manager at the museum, not the curator. “It was women’s history month and I bet our executive director that I could find and write a profile on a different historical woman in St. Pete every day for the month of March, which has 31 days. And I did.” Breckenridge said.

Soon the project became an idea for an exhibit, and then an actual exhibit. Mainly using digital archives of newspapers, Breckenridge started her research with the founder of the museum itself, Mary Wheeler Eaton. Each research subject led to several more and soon enough Breckenridge had 30 profiles ready for the gallery walls and a slideshow of many more. “‘Meddling’ comes from one of our St. Petersburg history books which was quoted as saying that the men of the town did not quite like the meddling women of St. Pete,” she said.

Breckenridge explained some of the challenges she came across during her research. First of all, until the mid-1980s, if a woman was married she was almost always only referred to by her husband’s name. This made finding information about the woman herself difficult, and having to sift through everything that was only about her husband tedious. 

Another challenge came because Black history is not as well documented as white history, which makes it even more challenging and important to discern an accurate historical narrative. Breckenridge said the only woman without a photo in the exhibit is Anna Donaldson, who alongside her husband was the first permanent Black settler in Pinellas County. 

Despite the challenges, the exhibit has been received very well. Breckenridge’s work has even inspired the community here in St. Petersburg to get involved in its own local history. She said people have been calling in to the museum to tell about an additional woman from the city’s history to add to the exhibit’s slideshow.

“It’s really exciting to be able to tell these stories,” she said.

The museum is exploring ways to make “Meddling” a permanent exhibit.

Executive director Rui Farias said, “Probably some time after the first year we’ll be looking at moving it into a larger gallery space,” said Rui Farias, executive director of the museum. 

[longlistshort]

Arts Annual 2022 at Creative Pinellas- Nathan Beard

More on Nathan Beard from the Creative Pinellas website–

Nathan Beard creates in St. Petersburg, FL and serves as Assistant Curator at Dunedin Fine Art Center. He also serves as Painting Faculty at DFAC and Adjunct Drawing Instructor at St. Petersburg College. His recently introduced Traveling Commission program – based on his Pond’s Edge series and available locally, nationally and globally – helps him connect with and collaborate more directly with his clients and collectors, with projects completed in Colorado, Maine, Georgia and Florida to date. Contact Nathan directly to discuss the process and possibilities at [email protected].

After receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Colorado State University in 2001, Beard worked in galleries and as an Art Consultant in Denver, CO for seven years. He grew up on a dairy farm in western New York. Prior to his university studies, Beard lived in Egypt for one year as an exchange student and, upon his return, worked as a cowboy in Wyoming for two years. He has exhibited extensively since 2013, including Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art, Tampa Museum of Art, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (Japan), Gallery 221/Hillsborough Community College, Olivet Nazarene University, Morean Arts Center, Dunedin City Hall Gallery, JADA Art Fair (Miami), and Brooker Creek Preserve. Beard’s work is in a number of private and corporate collections, including Parkview Medical Center, Great Bay Distributors, B2 Communications, MHK, Penny Hoarder, Osprey Properties, Sabal Trust and Tampa Bay Title. In January 2020, several of Beard’s large paintings were selected to serve in the Arts in Embassies program at the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador.