Wooooo weeeeeeeeeeee, that was a wild ride!
Just checking in while over at my sis-in-law’s house using her internet connection.
Most importantly, neither we, nor the pets had any injuries. In fact after over two weeks of clean up, we’re probably in better shape than ten years ago.
My property is about 5 miles inland (as the crow flies) from Fort Myers Beach which has been the subject of many news reels. They were pretty well wiped out. We were not, but did have significant storm surge and very high winds.
The living area floor of my house has been surveyed as being 10’ above sea level. Ian’s storm surge reached 10’-6” here. It was only at that level for a few minutes, but it was long enough for roughly 2 inches of water to make it under and around doors to flood the whole house. The lanai is 4 inches lower than the house and the garage is another 5 steps down from there. The water in the garage reached the door handles of our newer (old, but good shape and less than 80K miles) Ford Expedition. My work Expedition was outside hooked to my little camper. The water reached half way up the windows on it. Unfortunately, all my tools were either in my truck or down in the garage, so they are mostly destroyed. The garage flooding also wiped out my generator and ZTR lawn mower and a freezer full of food stock.
Ian was the third or fourth storm in my 22 years living here that was predicted to have a 10’ storm surge. From the street level, there is the equivalent of 11 steps to reach the floor of the house. In every other case the water only rose to the 3rd step. This time was different. I’m satisfied with our decision to stay because we immediately went to work moving water out of the house when the surge started to recede. We saved a whole lot more damage by being here, and kept the house liveable.
At the peak of the storm, I was braced against the front doors helping to counter the wind gusts. The front doors are double and 8 foot high. I was afraid the fixed door would break loose form the top and bottom pins and if those doors blew open, the joint would have been inundated with a whole lot more water. As I held the doors, I watched the waves crashing against the side-lights on both sides of the door. I also watched all sorts of things floating by, mailboxes, Kayaks, fences, furniture, a trampoline, sheds, canoes, even a john boat strapped to a trailer. The john boat came over a 6 foot fence, went by the front of the house and headed north up the canal. After the storm, I found that it came back and went around the back of the house landing with the tongue of the trailer atop my pool pump. When we get our internet service back, I’ll post a few pics.
We have flood insurance, but that only covers structure, not contents, so this is a very big hit. The adjuster was here and estimated flood repair costs around $80K, but that says nothing about the vehicles and thousands of content damage. The homeowner’s adjuster has yet to show up. I don’t think there will be any payout from them. They cover wind damage and other non-flood structure damages. The hurricane deductible on such policies is $30K, so it only comes into play with catastrophic building failure. Our wind damage was minimal.
Of course, the yard was a real mess. Two of my three mango trees blew over and the third was really beat up. My largest tree with the biggest mangos blew over on to the seawall and into the canal. It had to be cut up and dragged out. I righted the other mango tree and hope it will survive. I also righted two coconut trees that had blown over on the dock side of the house.
A house is being built next door. It had a large empty construction dumpster in front of it on the far side from me. It ended up floating around that house and stopped in my driveway after pushing over the smaller mango tree. I filled that gift up with debris and the dumpster company hauled it off.
We will move past all this. When you start feeling sorry for yourself, all you have to do is walk up the street past homes that were built in the decades before mine. Many of them had 6-8 feet of water in their homes. Their years of belongings now line the street waiting for the debris removal crews. It’s a sad thing, but it makes you count your blessings because it could have been much worse. We are alive, healthy and keeping our good humor.
I’m looking forward to getting back to normal and being online, though they give no estimate of how long that will take. Until then, my best wishes to all!
Life will be good, again!
AI
