St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman held a joint press conference on Sept. 19 with Duke Energy’s Florida President to talk about debris removal and lessons learned from Hurricane Irma.

  • Debris removal in St. Pete started 2 days early
  • FEMA paying $4 million for debris removal
  • Calls renewed for Duke Energy to strengthen power grid

"We announced that we would be starting removal of debris officially yesterday,” Kriseman said. “But thanks to a lot of hard work by my team and our consultants, we were able to start our debris removal two days early."

FEMA is paying $4 million for the debris removal that’s expected to take several weeks. Residents should put their storm debris in a pile on their front curbside. Crews will conduct multiple sweeps of the city.

Duke Energy’s Florida President Harry Sideris said power will be restored to all of the 35 counties the utility operates in by Tuesday night. Kriseman called Duke “irresponsible” for giving people “false hope” that power would be restored by last Friday.

The mayor acknowledged that remark during the press conference.

"I am sure I have probably driven [Sideris] crazy over the past week-and-a-half or so,” said Kriseman. “But that is what us mayors do. So, my apologies Harry."

Other local politicians, like State Sen. Jack Latvala, a Republican running for governor, have called for Duke Energy to strengthen the power grid. Specifically, Latvala wants electric utilities in Florida to stop donating to political candidates and instead spend that money on the grid.

“That money may not solve the entire problem, but it will be a good start,” Latvala said. “I’m sure the thousands of Floridians who are still struggling to live without electricity would be more than happy to hear our state’s utilities will stop political donations and instead focus on their welfare and needs.”

Latvala acknowledged that he has accepted money from utilities in the past, but said he will not in the future. Sideris would not say whether Duke Energy will stop its political contributions, but indicated the utility learned some lessons from Irma.

"We had a lot of issues and we're going to learn from those to be better in the future,” said Sideris. “We do have plans for more undergrounding our system.”

Sideris also apologized again for the problems customers experienced, and said Duke Energy will upgrade its I.T. system that was overwhelmed by Irma.

“Another thing we're going to be adding over the next few years is automated meters,” he said. “We will be able to then automatically know when people's power comes on or is off, without people having to call us."

Many customers complained on our Facebook page that Duke Energy did not do a good job trimming trees around power lines before the storm hit. Sideris said they maintain their right of ways.

"We have a very robust tree trimming program that's guided by the Public Service Commission,” he said.

Sideris did concede, however, that one reason they missed the Friday deadline was because crews ran into more downed trees in power lines than expected.