About 1/4 of small business are closed. Every major chain store is open. There are a few places to visit within walking distance such as a West Marine, a Laundromat, and a few restaurants. However, we are not close to a grocery. We decided to rent a car for a week, so we could stock up the boat and explore the area.
We drove around a lot. You can still see piles of trash along side US1. The side streets are even worse. As we talk to locals we understand the initial 90 days the removal plan is winding down, side street clean up is now left to the state and local governments. The state is arguing with the counties and the counties are arguing with the cities about who will pay to get the last of the piles cleaned up. FEMA is paying about 75% the cost. The good news, it is very organized and being well executed according to a plan.
Meanwhile there are locals who continue to take advantage if the situation and clean out or dump years of trash from their yards and houses. It’s amazing how not a single large tube TV survived IRMA. I bet we have seen 100 tubes. The trash you see below is only 25% of what was there 6 weeks ago. Citizens are no longer allow to dump trash on the state hwy. Tourist should start to see improvements. It will take a while.
Janis read that there are three beaches near Marathon. We went to check them out, but they were all on the Atlantic side and they were all closed. One was at a State Park, so we walked round to check it out. Lots of sand was removed by IRMA and sea grass put in its place.
We took a trip to Big Pine Key which took a direct hit. We were very encouraged when we saw a local group of women jumping in and doing their own clean up after the piles of trash were gone.. They have a flea market every weekend, so we stopped by. Only a few places were open, but we found a few things that we could purchase. (Got to keep the economy going).
One thing for sure Big bone bob can make a fortune down here. There are mountains of appliances stacked on the road side. The numbers of wrecked refrigerators, washers and freezer are crazy. If this were KY, every scraper would be having a field day.
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