Public Works & Solid Waste Team Up to Offer Self-Serving Sandbag Site

This year, Pinellas County offered preseason sandbags to the community to help people prepare early, reduce stress when a storm is approaching, and educate about the proper use and limitations of sandbags.

To accomplish this, Public Works partnered with Solid Waste to open a self-serve sandbag site. The demand has proven to be consistent enough that Public Works now restocks the site with 1,000 prefilled sandbags each Friday. Public Works also partnered with several municipalities, joining their local hurricane expos. The Public Works team built a freestanding doorway model to provide a visual demonstration of how to properly sandbag a doorway.

The real stars were the Stormwater crews who worked hard in the sun to load the prefilled sandbags (approx. 40 lbs. each) for the attendees. Between Palm Harbor, Dunedin, Seminole, Tarpon Springs and Clearwater, the Pinellas County crew distributed more than 3,700 sandbags to the community! A huge thank you to Shawn Johnson, Robert Johnson, Antonio Rutledge, William Orendorff, Arthur Wilder, Kendall Tisdale, Brandon Allen, Sheldon Douglas, Cody Holly, Danny Durban, Ryan Walters, Dave Martin Jr. and Rob Jones.

This new community service would not have been possible without a lot of work behind the scenes. Much appreciation to Bryan DiLorenzo, David Naja, Lewis Rosebrooks, Speros Zanetos, Andrew Tingling, Kathy Shakespeare, Ismael Pereyra, AJ Kicklighter and Craig Lawton for making everything a success.