Dealing with post-hurricane (dis)order

As hurricane season approaches, there will be countless stories about how to prepare for it. This isn’t one. As a Florida resident for 25 years I’ve been through hurricanes, but Irma was the first I experienced as a homeowner who suffered property damage. I learned I was unprepared for almost everything I faced after Irma blew her way through Sarasota.

But let’s start in late August 2017, and I’ll keep this short. I was on vacation in Wisconsin visiting family. Irma wasn’t a “thing.” She became a thing and I found myself in a Piggly Wiggly shopping for post-storm food and water, feeling the desperate need to explain to the cashier “I don’t normally eat like this.” What was supposed to be a leisurely return-to-Florida drive down the east coast of the U.S. with my brother Kerry turned into a relief effort on his part. Friends were texting me photos of my street: “Is this your tree across the road?” Kerry and I saw Army convoys and FEMA trailers (below) heading south on I-75. We lucked into a hotel room in Ellenton in the middle of the night because I didn’t want to go home in the dark. I prepared myself by mentally and emotionally letting go of my belongings, family heirlooms and all.

My house was standing and intact, but huge pine trees were down in every direction. The only other obvious problem was my fence was damaged; other issues revealed themselves over the course of a week. I felt overwhelmed and was unable to focus on any one task. Here, I offer some guidance if you find yourself in a similar situation. In no particular order:

Take photos. You might take photos of the destruction with the idea of building an impressive social media photo gallery, but they quickly become important documentation needed for dealing with your insurance company or when trying to get estimates. Take photos of repairs in progress and once complete.

Keep detailed records. Write down the details of every phone call you have with everyone regarding insurance, estimates, appointments, etc., including dates, times and with whom you spoke. Keep a file of estimates, receipts, business cards, and letters to and from the insurance and mortgage companies. You’ll refer to these often.

Walk around with the insurance adjuster. Your insurance adjuster doesn’t know what your place looked like before the storm hit, so be sure to walk around with him or her and point out everything. Reviewing your policy and having a list ready in advance helps. My adjuster was sent down from Illinois to work Hurricane Irma claims. He wouldn’t have known my driveway was cracked and caving in and my walkway had lifted because of the pine trees uprooted by Irma. By showing him this damage, my insurance settlement included $1,764 to cover it.

Your insurance checks might be made payable to you and your mortgage company, and your mortgage company might escrow the funds until repairs are complete. This came as a huge surprise. For claims over a certain amount, the insurance company might make your check(s) payable to both of you. My agent told me to sign the check and send it to my mortgage company, which would sign the check and return it to me. Well, not exactly. Instead they sent me a stack of paperwork and a letter outlining their extensive requirements for my property repairs. My mortgage company said they must protect their investors and wouldn’t release my insurance funds until the repairs were done, “thus ensuring the repairs to your property are completed.” I guess they wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to use the money to, say, buy a boat or take my best friend on a trip to Europe. In my first call to the mortgage company I informed them, “I can’t complete the repairs without MY insurance money.” I also threw in something about if they wanted to control my insurance money, they could start paying my premiums. It was a battle going nowhere. Which brings me to …

Be persistent. There was no way I could pay for nearly $23,000 in repairs without the insurance money. I called the mortgage company every day for a couple of weeks – sometimes more than once per day – suffering through a four-and-a-half-minute recorded message about their stellar customer service each time before I could even begin punching numbers to reach a person, often getting disconnected. It felt like a full-time job and it was frustrating. But I kept calling until I finally reached a sympathetic person who could think outside the scripted box and came up with a way for all the funds to be released to me as they came in. Hallelujah! Let the repairs begin!

File supplemental insurance claims. My roof replacement was estimated at $7,100 by both the insurance adjuster and the roof company. After the shingles were removed, it was discovered some plywood needed to be replaced to the tune of $509 (additional cost clearly stated in the roofer’s contract). I filed a supplemental claim following the guidelines of my insurance company and received a check to cover the additional cost.

Fences. I could get only one company to give me an estimate; another company said they were three months out from being able to provide an estimate. The price of replacement seemed high to me, for what it was, and the fine print read “Any removal priced at $2 per foot (not included).” I did some research on home improvement store websites and ended up paying $1,670 less than estimated by hiring a handyman and ordering materials. With no fence company to haul away the old panels, I had to take them to the street for garbage collection. At first I was prepping them according to standard pick-up regulations, but with a quick call to the county I learned I could stack whole panels and schedule a free bulk pick up.

Tree removal. Tree removal vultures come out in full force. A guy, a truck, a chainsaw, a hastily put together flyer and a low price. These cash only, quick turnaround types might be good for certain kinds of work, but if you have big trees in precarious positions, call a pro. The pine tree that fell across my entire back yard and power line (above) and into my pool was best removed by a licensed, insured service with access to a crane. Because part of the tree was resting on my roof, it was an insurance claim. If it hadn’t been, it would not have been. Know this in advance. The cost billed to insurance for one-and-a-half hours of work was more than the average person earns in three months. This tree service was cutting another pine tree trunk into smaller sections and one landed on and broke my backflow preventer cutting off the water to my house. They worked quickly to find a plumber to make the repair and paid for it.

Call the city or county when necessary. After a month of the pine tree debris sitting in my ditches where it had been put by the county and the tree service, it was finally removed. Sort of. The logs and bigger branches were gone, but my ditches were left full of smaller debris (above). I wrote an email to the county saying, in part, “Nice start. You are cordially invited to come back and finish the job.” The county came out and agreed they needed to come back to clean up the rest. Had I not made this call, I would have spent hours in my ditches bagging rotting debris myself – and that wasn’t going to happen.

Things won’t go as planned. The stump grinder cut the cable to my house. The fence materials order I paid an extra $99 to have delivered at a certain time showed up a day late and was incomplete. The roofing crew worked for two days and then disappeared for five. In the meantime, the roof that looked like it was properly protected leaked when it rained and water spots appeared on my ceiling. Any one of these alone seems par for the course, but when you experience all of them in a short period of time it takes its toll when things are already stressful.

Ask for what you need, even though you might not get it. I have a dog (above) as does the neighbor behind me. With portions of my fence missing, I couldn’t let my dog out as normal so I bought a stake and a 20-foot nylon lead. My neighbor was still opening his back door and letting his dog run with free access into my yard. I couldn’t take my dog out unless I first checked for his. I couldn’t leave my dog alone in the yard. As I was coaxing his dog back to his yard one day, I asked him, kindly, if he could please keep his dog on a leash until I could repair the fence – for everybody’s safety. He listened but didn’t change his ways, even after I asked him several times. I remained angry and inconvenienced until the last fence panel along the back was firmly in place.

Know what’s yours to deal with. Within three minutes of pulling into my driveway and getting out of the car from the drive down from Wisconsin – and before I even got into my house – my neighbor to the north came over to try to convince me his two fallen pine trees were mine. They'd been standing on his side of the lot line the 17 years I’ve lived here … and now they’re mine? One tree had fallen into my yard – yes, mine to remove. The other one was leaning into a tree of mine – also, mine to remove. But those stumps and root balls clearly on his side of the lot line? His to deal with. I had plenty of my own stumps to grind, and this cost wasn’t covered by insurance.

Help others when you can. On the opposite side of the above coin, one of my pine trees fell onto my southern neighbor’s roof (above), damaging it and knocking out their power. I had power. I knew the tree was theirs to deal with, but it didn’t stop me from feeling somehow responsible. Over their destroyed chain link fence that separated our yards, I offered them the cool comfort of my air-conditioned home. Cold drinks. Hot showers. I gave them a gift card to a restaurant after they declined all other offers. We became friendlier neighbors to each other because of Hurricane Irma, and now we have frequent conversations over their repaired fence.

Ai Weiwei's "Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads" at The Ringling

Try to have some fun. In the week following the storm, local attractions were offering free or reduced admission prices. Kerry and I took advantage of The Ringling’s special free day and visited the circus museum for the first time, walked through the museum’s main galleries, strolled the grounds, and sat by the water. Another day we drove to Anna Maria Island to have lunch on the pier only to find it was closed due to damage. The Sandbar was open so we ate there, and for a couple of hours I felt like a carefree tourist enjoying the sun, sand and surf.

Nearly eight months have passed since Irma whirled her way into my life and I’m still working on the projects she left for me. With an active 2018 hurricane season predicted, I take some comfort in knowing more about how to deal with storm aftermath than I did in 2017. Best of luck to all of us.