Hurricane Helen and Milton touched on everyone in the Tampa Bay Area last year. Some lost a bit, others lost everything.
Water and wind have destroyed thousands of homes and hundreds of businesses. The worst residents returned to the squeeze floor and drifted mold from behind a flooded drywall. Adrenaline quickly scared me.
In the next few weeks, some recovered. They fixed the broken one. Life has returned to normal and at least to normal adjacent ones.
But many people couldn’t move on. They simmer in the limbo between knowing what they need to do and being allowed to do it.
A recent article has done a thorough (if you’re disappointed, but you’re disappointed) explaining why.
After the storm, local communities in the National Flood Insurance Program should assess damaged buildings. If the total value of the building is repaired and the land is not included, the owner will have to destroy the building or rebuild it to a more stringent and costly standard. This program makes sense. The government wants to avoid paying repeatedly to repair the same building.
In fact, Pinellas County and state contractors were hired to assess damaged homes and hashed it. The Times documented how the contractor flagged damage that did not exist and sent a report with photos of the wrong house. The county said there was a “robust quality control process,” but please do not say that dissatisfied residents will leave false damage reports. It doesn’t help residents looking for remedies to bounce back between bouncing institutional bouquets, which are equally useless. What they need is a straight answer, not a run round.
I want to say this will never happen again. Learn from mistakes and everything runs smoothly. It’s a hopeful idea. It may improve the system for assessing damaged homes, but there is something else. The flood control pump may be incorrect or it may be a long time while suffering from getting permission for repairs. Or something we haven’t thought about yet. For decades, we have built too many things in too many vulnerable places. Now we pay the price.
It doesn’t just mean by diverting insurance costs and taxes to improve the stormwater system. That could mean that local governments will be overwhelmed by the hurricane damage, grope through the home assessment process and scramble what residents should do next.
The hurricane problem is much bigger than it was 50 years ago. This is mainly because many of us get in the way. It means more people to destroy homes, cars, and other things that hurricanes will destroy, and others that will disrupt more lives. Bowling balls are generally the same, but there are plenty of more pins to knock down.
And it doesn’t take a direct blow to overwhelm the system. Helen traveled more than 100 miles north offshore, while Milton was closer to Sarasota than St. Petersburg. Still, the 1-on-2 punches have devastated parts of our area and passed the ability to easily restore our community. A major failure to assess a home is proof of this.
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The Times article also reminded me that there are few quick solutions to problems that last decades. Unlike bowling pins, homes and businesses are difficult to keep out of the way. It’s easy to say you should retreat from the edge of the water. It’s much harder to pull that off.
That doesn’t mean we’re giving up. Among other improvements, you can strengthen your home and build more flood control. And yes, the power of the market plays a role. Some insurance companies and mortgage lenders have already been pulled back from vulnerable areas. Construction is difficult if the owner cannot obtain insurance or a 30-year mortgage.
But it takes time to wait for a wide range of elasticity and markets to shift. In the meantime, the hurricanes will continue to come. They don’t care if we’re ready or shaking for the prolonged mal laziness of last season.
People who get caught up in family reviews are worth better. The community should work hard to help them. But when it comes to hurricanes, I’m worried that I’ll have to get used to more anxiety and less satisfying outcomes. The transition to greater elasticity is complicated and expensive, with more bumps along the way.
