Four years after Hurricane Michael, Panama City, Fla. is replanting, rebuilding

It’s been nearly four years since Hurricane Michael ripped through Florida’s panhandle, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake that’s still being felt.  

“We lost 80 percent of our trees,” said Greg Brudnicki, mayor of Panama City, a municipality of around 30,000 people on Florida’s panhandle. He estimated the number of trees the city lost was “close to a million—four out of five were gone.” 

For perspective, Hurricane Irma, which made landfall a year before, scattered 2.7 million cubic yards of debris across 50 Florida counties, according to Brudnicki. 

“During Hurricane Michael, on our little 35-square-mile footprint, we had 4 million cubic yards of debris,” he said, describing the aftermath as “a warzone. I had to chisel my way out the front door.” 

That was only the beginning. In the coming weeks, Brudnicki awakened daily at 3:30 a.m. to check in at “a makeshift city hall, which was a Verizon tent.” He’d clock out around 8 p.m., “smoke a cigar, eat something, then go to bed and get up and do it again—day in and day out.” 

The city’s population dropped from more than 35,000 people to 25,000. The economy was rocked; property taxes dipped. These years later, Panama City is bouncing back, having recovered around 5,000 new and returning residents, as well as new businesses. Regardless, it’s still an uphill battle and recovery is slow. 

Beyond a singular natural disaster, the Category 5 storm fundamentally changed the region’s ecosystem. With so many trees uprooted or splintered, regular flooding has turned into an issue. A year after Hurricane Michael, another storm swept through. Without roots to pull water from the ground—an average tree draws 50 to 100 gallons per day—“Our flooding problems were so exacerbated,” he said.  

Earlier this year, they experienced an unprecedented, opposite problem—without trees to hold moister, the region dried out. The increased amount of fuel load on the ground created the perfect conditions for wildfire.

“Things got dry, and things got windy,” Brudnicki said. More than 50,000 acres burned, “Going right up the path where the hurricane went. … It was devastating.” 

Beyond the immediate environmental needs, Brudnicki said the city’s building codes and other bylaws were designed around the previously tree-heavy environment. Without the protection of trees, constituents also face insurance increases on top of what they’ve endured already. This has given a sense of urgency to restoring the ecosystem to a semblance of its previous state.

Along with federal FEMA funds (the city is slated to receive around $400 million in aid when everything is done), “We are appealing to people,” Brudnicki said, highlighting a reforestation push called the ReTree PC initiative, which has a goal of replanting 100,000 trees in the city by 2025. The program has already given away more than $10,000 in trees to community members for planting, and hosted educational events. Brudnicki said, through donations and grants, they’ve raised an estimated $100,000. Of that, $40,000 is from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

Through these efforts, a statement from Panama City notes it was recently redesignated as a Tree City USA by the Arbor Day Foundation—a designation they lost after Hurricane Michael. The city is using a tree-tracking technology called iTree to maintain a census of all trees on public land or rights-of-way. 

“It’ll be years before we get back to normal, or whatever the new normal is,” Brudnicki said. “2025 is only a couple years away—try to keep it realistic, but also aggressive enough.” 

Along with tree replanting, the city is also rethinking its landscaping in some areas, including a silvicultural system. Tree roots planted in between the sidewalk and roadway extend down to underground water tanks that catch runoff. Unused water is routed into the bay, where it helps filter the water there. 

As local leaders look to the future, Brudnicki is placing his faith in the resilience of his fellow public workers and constituents. 

“The only thing we haven’t had Is an earthquake,” he quipped. “We’ve had flooding, we’ve had it all. These people here are tough.”