Volunteers help families with post-hurricane cleanup efforts in hard-hit St. Pete neighborhood

The sounds of industrial fans, shop vacs and heavy machinery still echo through the St. Petersburg neighborhood of Shore Acres, where front lawns are holding grounds for piles of belongings destroyed from Hurricane Idalia’s storm surge.

There is still a lot of cleaning up left to do, but as people pick up the pieces, a group of strangers are lending a helping hand.

“He just went up and down some of the hardest hit streets and said 'Who needs help?' We did the same after [Hurricane] Ian,” Amy Braswell said outside a home in Shore Acres, where a family lost most of what was in their home from flooding.

Amy’s husband Mike Braswell started the social media page “Loving St. Pete” to highlight local businesses, in a few years he got tens of thousands of followers and in the wake of disasters, he’s mobilized his online crowd.