Our Home Property Before and After Hurricane Michael

My family has been through many hurricanes since 1963. Most of those I was living in South Florida (where the palm trees tend to bend with the wind). We left and went north before some storms and a couple we road out as my husband's job had him on call. We suffered some roof and screen porch damage from Frances in 2004 when we still lived in Jupiter, Florida. Many of our friends agree that we have never seen anything like the destruction left by Hurricane Michael. The storm came up quickly, moved through quickly (thank the Lord) and wasn't overly wet. But the winds were terrible.
Here are some before and after images of our house and surrounding property.

BEFORE: This is an image of our back yard and doesn't fully show the lush trees behind us.

AFTER: We were thankful the chicken hutch (white roof) was not damaged at all! The close up trees are mostly down, several uprooted, and many trees in the acres beyond are snapped in half.

BEFORE: This was a shot of suntipped trees along the right (east) side looking from the back of the house out to the front.

AFTER: Most of the trees along the east side of the house are down. The scraggly tree might be the shorter suntipped tree from the "before" photo.

This is the west side showing the downed trees along the side of the house where they took down an awning over the basement door. Normally you could see the chicken hutch from this view but not now.

I don't have a matching picture for this but here is one from the RV to the garage - the east side of the house. There are two cars under those trees. Our son-in-law's car was crushed but fortunately my husband's Jeep only had one window knocked out and our EasyGo suffered no damage under a tent covering to the left.

BEFORE: This is looking at the house on the front, north side from the right (east) side of the curved driveway.

AFTER: This shot includes the driveway at a slightly different angle. Our Granddaughter is about to step onto the driveway.

And this shows trees down and uprooted along the right side of the drive. We can not use this access out yet as the cable lines are still blocking the way out to the road.

BEFORE: This is an image looking out the west side of our curved drive. There are two dogwood trees beyond the oak on the right:

AFTER: This is looking from the drive to the house. The big tree and the dogwoods would be on the left side of the drive in this view but they are down.

BEFORE: This was our front walk way with my Versa where I usually park.

AFTER: This was early the morning after the storm. My Versa is under the trees; it was declared totaled.

These trees had branches that went into our roof. The first poked holes over our garage.

This tree stuck branches in two places: over our living room and over the guest bedroom.

We were fortunate that this damage in the guest bedroom was the worst of the damage inside the house other than a few other ceiling stains from leaks.

The insurance will cover the trees on the roof and driveway that blocked access. They do not cover the downed trees in the yard.
Our Well Pump Shed was crushed. It housed my husband's water treatment equipment which includes the chlorinator and water softener necessary to give us clean water rather than hard well water full of iron. It also housed our four wheeler which we have not been able to extricate yet.

Many in our area and surrounding counties suffered even worse than we did as can be seen by the complete destruction of homes in Mexico Beach where the hurricane made landfall.
As I mentioned in my previous post, we were blessed to have the RV and generator power, plus hot water, for the 18 days before power was restored. There are still some people and businesses without power. We are comfortable that God is in control and we trust Him in this storm and all others!

I'll share pictures and an update about my office next week.