ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The stench was overpowering.
A potent scent of mold, sewage and decay permeated the sticky air blanketing the Twin City mobile home park on Saturday, just three days after wind and rain from Hurricane Milton battered the collection of modest trailer homes.
Located near the Gandy Bridge and home to some of the city’s most vulnerable residents, the community had already been devastated by Hurricane Helene well before Milton made landfall on Wednesday in Siesta Key, roughly 50 miles south of St. Petersburg.
“These last two hurricanes were the worst thing that’s happened here,” said 61-year-old James William Lawson Jr., who has been living in a tent on his plot and only goes inside his ruined trailer to get water because the mold is so bad. “Milton, I think, dealt the final blow.”
Another longtime tenant, 70-year-old Ninda Menegias, said she has to don a medical mask each time she ventures inside what’s left of her trailer home.
“It’s just been one thing after another,” said Menegias, who has lived at the Twin City mobile home park for 11 years. “I cry and cry and cry, and I’m a very strong person.”
The development is managed by a company called Lakeshore Management. Before Milton struck, several tenants accused the company of deceiving them about the flood risk when they rented the plots for their trailer homes.
They also said Lakeshore Management was forcing them to pay a monthly rental fee even though they weren’t really living there.
The company’s vice president of field operations sidestepped NBC News’ questions about flooding and rental fees but said they were already doing “everything we can to help our residents at this very difficult time.”
“We are working with utility companies to restore power and refer residents to key resources that are available at all levels of government including FEMA,” Shawn Halladay said in an email Tuesday. “We’re all in this together and we are committed to doing our part to restore our community.”
NBC News reached out again to Halladay on Saturday for an update. There was no immediate response.
“We think it’s morally and heavily wrong to watch not only the community that you manage and operate, but that you’re supposed to care for, lose absolutely everything to their name and still demand money,” tenant Jesse Hancock said Saturday.
Milton, which came ashore as a Category 3 hurricane, battered Florida‘s barrier islands on the Gulf Coast with 100-mph wind gusts and 6 feet of storm surge before heading inland, killing at least 17 people and causing billions of dollars of damage across the middle of the state before heading out into the Atlantic Ocean.
But as Milton bore down on Siesta Key, Twin City was still recovering from Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in the Florida Panhandle on Sept. 26 and wrecked much of the mobile home park.
Many of the Twin City trailers were deemed uninhabitable by city inspectors, who plastered signs with bright-red lettering on the structures that said “Unsafe” and “Do not enter or occupy.” And because it is in a low-lying area, Twin City was part of a mandatory evacuation zone.
Menegias rode out Milton at a nearby hotel on higher ground and returned home on Friday to assess the damage. She expressed relief that her little “castle” wasn’t completely flattened, unlike so many of her neighbors’ homes.
Inside, though, Menegias discovered that the mold that set in after Helene flooded it with 4 feet of water was now pervasive, feeding on what was left of her ruined belongings.
Even with theirs masks on, Menegias said, both she and her husband have developed hacking coughs from spending extended time inside their trailer. But they feel trapped because they can’t afford to move anywhere else, she said, and they have nowhere else to go.
“Money, take you and break you,” she said. “And trust me, my friend, that is so true.”
Hancock, 39, and Ria Blaight, 34, took shelter at Blaight’s father’s home in nearby Pinellas Park.
They returned to Twin City on Saturday to see what they could still salvage from their trailer. They were carrying out wooden cabinets and damaged furniture from Helene when NBC News arrived.
Both said they too were relieved Milton didn’t flatten their home or wash it away completely. But they said they will have to remove and replace all of their home’s mold-infested drywall, insulation and cabinets, and spray everything else down with bleach to make it habitable again.
“Scoop up some of that mud and smell that — that’s what our house smells like,” Hancock said, pointing to the sewage-tainted mud that remained on the road outside their wrecked home. “It smells like you just left food in the refrigerator and just left it open for months.”
Still, Hancock said he has no plans to move. He said that during the past seven years, he poured about $50,000 into his home and has no choice but to rebuild.
Hancock and Blaight, both part-time UPS employees, said they’re hoping FEMA will help cover some of their new expenses.
“We can’t leave yet,” Hancock said. “We don’t have anywhere else to leave to. …This is our life savings.”
Lawson said he was “absolutely heartbroken” when he returned to Twin City after Milton. While the storm scattered many of his friends, he said, leaving is not an option for him, even though he is uncertain if the community will ever recover.
“All of us have had enough heartbreak in our lives,” he said. “They’re just my trailer hood family, you know. But I care about them.”
Matt Lavietes reported from St. Petersburg. Corky Siemaszko reported from New York City.
