ST. PETERSBURG ― Barnali Dixon scurried across the long room, placing down yellow tablecloths and arranging platters of food.
Soon after, Erica Hall whisked into the space at the Enoch Davis Community Center in south St. Petersburg, already smiling.
The pair, and a few additional hands, set out gift baskets and plaques for the early December meeting.
“We want to celebrate our volunteers, celebrate our community members,” Hall said.
The group, composed of neighborhood and community leaders, is the Storm Squad. Dixon and Hall lead the pilot program, which was born out of research conducted by Dixon, a professor at the University of South Florida’s St. Petersburg campus, who found recovery disparities in low-income neighborhoods in St. Petersburg after Hurricane Irma.
Storm Squad aims to close the rift.
“We were comparing a low-income community with an affluent community,” said Dixon, the executive director of the Initiative on Coastal Adaption at USF. “We realized through that research that people’s needs are different, and also the access to resources are different.”
The group gets together several times a month, from leader-only meetings to gatherings open to the public. The goal is to connect underserved residents navigating the effects of climate change with education opportunities and resources.
“After Irma, it was felt that a lot of people in South St. Petersburg … didn’t know about services that were available, never mind being able to access them,” said Mary Burrell, who works on community engagement for Pinellas County’s Emergency Management department.
“That’s a gap ― so how can we fill this gap?”
On the early December night, members were slow to trickle in. They picked from the food platters, eating and chatting quietly.
It was a small group, Burrell said. With the holidays so close, it’s hard to get bigger turnouts, she said.
While Dixon set up a survey used for storm research, Hall encouraged everyone to eat.
Hall, the chair of the board for the Florida Food Policy Council, described the group as “neighbors helping neighbors.”
Dixon’s research identified several neighborhoods in South St. Petersburg such as Bartlett Park, Childs Park and Lake Maggiore Shores that were not only disadvantaged but also at risk of flooding and storm surge.
These are primarily Black neighborhoods, Hall said. And they are particularly vulnerable to hurricanes because of their proximity to the coast, she said.
Governments have historically marginalized minority groups, breeding distrust with officials, Dixon said.
“People don’t necessarily trust a couple people that came from the government that just say ‘hey, here I am,’” Burrell said.
“They trust their faith leaders, they trust their community leaders, they trust their neighbors,” Burrell said.
Storm Squad builds upon that.
The pilot program uses storm captains — two residents from each of the identified neighborhoods — to pass along storm information.
Dixon secured funding in 2023 to give stipends to storm captains. A Childs Park flyer seeking storm captains says a stipend is available for $2,000 a year, for three years.
Grants from Duke Energy largely fund the stipend, Dixon said, though the group will have to reapply for funding again next year.
The idea of storm captains is to connect them directly to local officials.
“This is essentially a phone tree,” Dixon said.
For example, if an area is without power, a storm captain can go to someone like Burrell and ask for a generator.
Storm captains also collect data by using an app to record flooding in their neighborhood. And additional survey data collected in the off-season helps inform Dixon and her team about what she calls “hidden needs.”
For example, someone may have mobility issues and cannot make it to a bus stop to get to a hurricane shelter. Or someone may need access to electricity because they have refrigerated medication.
“We can actually aggregate the data … so when the storm comes, then we know where those hidden needs are,” Dixon said. “Then we can build a supply system that’s needed to address those needs.”
By 6:30 p.m., about a dozen people had joined the meeting. Some of the group’s storm captains, non-profit lawyers, USF students, advocates and a couple of citizens all sat at the long tables.
They spent the next several minutes finishing out the survey and moving onto discussing this past hurricane season.
The Tampa Bay area experienced its worst storm season in a century. Three storms —Hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton — dealt severe blows to the region, from storm surge and inland flooding to extreme winds that toppled decades-old trees.
While Storm Squad has existed in some form for the past few years, major storms this year were the first to really test its capabilities.
Angel Torrens, 42, became a storm captain for the Harbordale neighborhood in 2023.
“Through these three storms, it couldn’t have come at a better time,” Torrens said, discussing the Storm Squad. “Honestly, I just wish that we would have had a little more time to get more resources.”
“But we did really well, honestly.”
After the recent storms, Torrens spent hours a day riding his bike, documenting damage in his neighborhood. He came upon flooded streets, downed trees and peeled back signs.
Torrens connected with people like Burrell and city of St. Petersburg leaders to coordinate supplies like meals, water and tarps for his neighborhood.
The more photos he uploaded, the more officials could see the need in Torrens’ community.
Gina Driscoll, a St. Petersburg Council Member, reached out to Torrens about a downed tree he had recorded after a storm.
“Did they take care of that?” she’d asked. “I just made a call.”
Torrens went to the store, and by the time he’d returned, the tree had been hauled away.
“It’s humbling to see that people are paying attention and they actually care,” Torrens said. “Because … we would have gone unnoticed for a lot of things, and we have in the past.”
As the December meeting neared to a close, the group pulled out the plaques and gifts (coffee mugs filled with goodies).
The group recognized Torrens for his work during the past storms. He smiled and accepted it modestly.
Storm Squad also recognized another member, Rebekah Johnson, a storm captain for Childs Park, who wasn’t there that night.
In a later phone call, Johnson, 41, said she’d joined the Storm Squad after group members spoke at her church. She hadn’t known about storm benefits available to her.
“I missed opportunities that exist,” Johnson said.
Now she takes time to canvass in her neighborhood, telling residents about Storm Squad and encouraging them to come out to meetings. Johnson said filling the knowledge gap will create more resilient neighborhoods.
“You shouldn’t have to wait until a storm comes up in life to have someone’s back, their protection,” Johnson said. “They should be willing to help your neighbor, just because that’s your neighbor.”.