by Peter Roos
More than four months have passed since hurricanes Helene and Milton visited our coast, causing unprecedented flooding from storm surge, followed two weeks later by hurricane strength winds. Virtually every building on the coast was impacted by one, the other, or both.
Most businesses were uninsured. Homes too. If the mortgage was paid off, residents on fixed incomes had cancelled their expensive flood and windstorm policies, due to rising costs of everything, since no storm had caused our area significant damage since October 1921.
FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is charged with monitoring cleanup and repairs after such disasters, ensuring that buildings with “substantial damage” are elevated out of or removed from the “flood plain.”
Substantial damage is defined as 50% of the “structure’s value” as estimated by the county tax assessor, or a private appraiser hired by the owner.
Our home had 30 inches of sea water in it, plus sewage that backed up into buildings due to failure of the pumps that are supposed to move it to the mainland. Homes closer to the Gulf of Mexico had even higher surges; some in Sunset Beach had up to 8 feet of sea water in the house.
A monumental effort was made by each city on the coast to clean and dry out the homes and businesses in the weeks after Helene, until the area evacuated for Milton’s impending arrival. Luckily for us in the Tampa Bay area, Milton took a late jog to the east, causing far more water damage south of us. However, the winds were more than ever before, ripping off roofs of homes and commercial buildings and downing trees that had stood for hundreds of years.
There were still piles of debris from Helene in front of many homes and mountains in parks and ball fields used as local staging areas. We thought we would find that debris everywhere, but amazingly, once the rain soaked them, the winds could not seem to move them.
FEMA approved Transitional Sheltering Assistance for people whose dwellings were uninhabitable, stays in motels that would accept the special low FEMA rate, but so many people were impacted that available rooms were at least an hour’s drive from home and in motels that were substandard or worse.
After relying on family and friends, some managed to navigate online applications to eventually obtain a room closer to home. Some moved their RVs into their driveways to live in. Others did minimal electrical repairs, had appliances delivered and moved back into their homes without the lower 4 feet of drywall.
Then some cities started providing permits for minimal repairs, so electrical work and drywall replacement could proceed. Total electrical work can be done in St. Pete Beach thanks to a plan change made by the commission in mid-January, thanks to a motion by Lisa Robinson, commissioner from District 2, who is running for re-election March 11.