Tampa mayor Jane Castor was asked by the New York Times why she thought people keep moving here to live near the water as storms keep getting worse? She said, “That’s sort of the price you may have to pay for living in paradise.”
I’m sitting in my undamaged house with power and air conditioning on a Sunday morning thinking about the last few days. A hurricane that hadn’t even formed a week ago has changed the lives of so many in paradise.
So much so that I’m guessing a lot of us are wondering if it is worth the price?
Look, I get it. Climate change. We can argue all day what has caused it. It’s political. That said, we can’t argue about the fact that it’s getting warmer. The water is getting hotter. The Gulf of Mexico is like rocket fuel for a hurricane. We just saw it happen with Hurricane Helene. It happened with Hurricane Idalia a year ago.
I work with the best meteorologists on the planet. They just are. What they said this hurricane would do was right on track.
What I didn’t listen to was how bad the storm surge would be. Record storm surge. Feet of water. Lesson learned.
Look at Davis Islands in Tampa. I had a good friend send a picture of himself paddle boarding down the streets.
Look at the barrier islands. Anna Maria. Holmes Beach. St. Pete Beach. Pass-a-Grille. Flooding that left behind feet of sand.
The northern counties. The same story. First responders risking their lives to try and save those who decided to ride out the storm.
Heartbreaking stories. The gentleman on Davis Islands who has lost everything including his 17 year old chihuahua that was swept away in the flooding.
Houses burning up because the water was too deep for fire trucks to get there.
And then, the loss of life. I think we won’t have that answer for days.
This is an event we will all remember. We went to dinner Friday night. The questions everyone asked: “Are you okay? Is your house okay? Do you have power?“
Then, “Have you ever seen anything like this?” No, I haven’t.
I keep reminding myself that we didn’t even take a direct it. The center of Helene was a hundred miles from us. What if it had been closer?
Now, the clean up and rebuilding. It’s going to take a long time to get beyond this. I interviewed an insurance expert yesterday. She said the majority of the damage was caused by flooding. I just hope these people had flood insurance.
I also asked her what this would do to an already out of control property insurance market in Florida. To my surprise, she said it’s a “manageable event.” Really? Because it’s mostly damage caused by flooding, private insurers won’t be on the hook for the bulk of this.
Flood insurance, by the way, is a national program run by FEMA.
I must admit, I have survivor’s guilt over this. I live one block from the water. We saw nothing. Like I said earlier, no flooding and no loss of power. Very, very lucky.
So many are not. So many lives changed forever. I keep thinking about what the mayor said about the cost of living in paradise. Is it worth it? I don’t know anymore.