The wife and I don’t know how many hurricanes we’ve witnessed in our twenty two years in Florida . Not all of them were frightening enough to be etched in our memories but we do know they all made us nervous . That’s because when we first came here our attitude was ….
” What are the chances ? ”
Turns out the chances are better than we thought and our first memory of a hurricane destroyed our town and severely damaged our home and we’ve seen that happen more than once . We just watched a woman being interviewed on television having just witnessed the same thing just a couple of hours north of here . She was crying in front of her flooded home and we cried too as we know so many people still trying to straighten their lives out 11 months after the last major hurricane disrupted them .
State and local government here in Florida are to be commended for early proactive measures as activating the National Guard and putting the power companies on alert. Police departments , fire and rescue personel are ever alert but are geared up even further. But it’s the follow up I’m concerned about now as I think of that woman crying in front of the camera.
Eleven months after Ian I know many still living with family or paying rape rates for rent while waiting for their homes to be repaired because the people able to do the work are too busy earning more while building new housing develpments with a higher property tax rate. I know still more living in substandard conditions with leaky roofs and mold because eleven months after the last hurricane their insurance companies have still not paid up and they’ve no place to go.
Perhaps we should invite that poor crying woman to come down to Charlotte county as we’ve just recently opened two small Fema parks filled with habitable trailers that sat empty in a field for nine months after the storm . Heaven forbid she has to wait for similar amenities closer to her uninhabitable home .
