Recovering after Hurricane Michael could take years, Irma survivors say
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Florida Keys resident Mike Umberg struggled through two chapters of recovery after Hurricane Irma plowed through the chain of coral islands in September 2017 as a fearsome Category 4 storm.
First came the fight to regain some semblance of modern life: He waited 10 days before a fuel tanker rolled through his neighborhood to refill his home's generator, three weeks before cellphone service was restored and 30 days before the electricity stayed on for good
When the 56-year-old retired boat captain no longer had to fetch water with a bucket from a nearby canal to flush the toilet, that was hailed as a major milestone.
Then there are the difficulties Umber has endured in the year since: The post-traumatic stress disorder and hospital bills from a water infection. The exterminator cost to get rid of a bat infestation left behind in Irma's wake. And fighting with an insurance company that only offered him $25,000 for a newly-built, $700,000 house that was partially wrecked in the storm.
Now, he says he is left with an eerie feeling of anguish after deadly Hurricane Michael leveled whole neighborhoods in the Florida Panhandle this week and left behind a trail of debris and power outages for more than 1 million people across six states.
"This was our dream house — we were in paradise," he said said of his Little Torch Key home. "People seem to have forgotten about us."
It's a feeling Umberg is worried that people in the Panhandle — from those living in beach communities to rural inland pockets — will begin to experience as they face the headaches of rebuilding and potentially battling with insurance companies.
Based on his ongoing experience, he estimates that many will be trying to recover for the next five to seven years.
Like the Florida Keys, portions of the Panhandle known as the Emerald Coast — home to warm Gulf waters, sugar white sands and pastel seaside resorts — beckon visitors year-round. Snowbirds from the North have second homes there, and the beaches are popular with people from the South and Midwest.
Its recovery will be long. Florida Gov. Rick Scott has described Michael as the most damaging hurricane to hit Florida since Andrew in 1992.
"This is the worst from what I've seen in a long shot," he told NBC News on Friday as he toured the devastation. "And if you think about the difference with Irma, water just came in and came out — it didn't move things like this."
While the state has yet to determine an estimate for the destruction, data and analytics firm CoreLogic predicts damage to residential and commercial properties could stretch upwards of $4.5 billion — but that only includes insured losses. (Losses for Irma were estimated at $8 billion earlier this year.)
In Mexico Beach, which took a direct hit from Hurricane Michael on Wednesday afternoon, the loss — of homes, of power, of livelihoods — has stunned those locals audacious enough to ride out such a vicious storm.
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I know that this article is not exaggerating. I know families who were rebuilding their homes till last year from Sandy. After the power is turned on, the real work starts.......
"We were in paradise !"
Melbourne Fl ... Also Paradise !!
That's what I thought till I saw the aftermath at Homestead.
That changed my mind. Then I thought:
Life's tough enough for me to keep going thru these damn hurricanes myself and seeing that amount of devastation at Homestead just made my "Paradise" "A paradise lost"... I started working on getting out while I could in one piece and finally left Florida probably never to return. Lock, stock and barrel.
Sitting on a pile of rubble, (homeless) probably jobless, waiting in line for labor and material to rebuild ...Underpaid for the rebuild to boot (happens ALL the time) Well that random but very possible reality didn't seem like anything I really wanted to spend months to years doing and paying for.
Considering I only lived about 4 miles from the atlantic ocean I thought moving on was best, leaving "paradise" for others to enjoy without me.
I wish them all the best, but "Paradise" was not for me.