It’s the busiest time of year for the United States Postal Service but more than a half dozen post offices in Tampa Bay remain closed following damage from back-to-back hurricanes.
Customers are frustrated with no clear timeline on when they’ll reopen.
For as long as he can remember, Jim Reatherford has had a P.O. box at the post office in Ruskin.
“Since 1963,” he said. “We’re having a great deal of difficulty getting our mail and it’s very inconvenient.”
It’s been closed for close to three months since Hurricane Helene damaged the building. It flooded and suffered a major roof leak. Now people who use that location are forced to go to the post office in Old Sun City and wait.
“Everyone who has a P.O. box here has to be in a line, single-file line, to get to one person who’s plucking the mail from I don’t know where,” he said. “[It] doesn’t seem to be very organized, I don’t know because it takes them a long time to find your mail.”
