The Damage at my Office - No Rain Needed

These are images of the damage to my office.

Office image before the hurricane:
my office, brown with the bright blue awning, is the fourth building in from the right.
The other brown brick building with lighter blue awning shares the middle wall with me.
She has a true second story; mine is only a facade.

This is an image shared by someone during the storm:

The building that lost its front is two doors down from mine; the second from right above. It is being demolished.

Here are images a few days after the hurricane of just my office and the neighbor.

Here is an aerial view of the corner block after the storm, before we could get up to see the damage.
The hole on the roof shows on the fourth building in from right.

This is the inside lobby which becomes a rainfall when raining.

There are cracks from corner to corner along the front which is creating the structural concerns.

Here is the 15' x 32' hole on the roof with bricks fallen in.

The side walls and this hole are making it difficult to get tarping secured.

We are not sure what is holding the bricks on the roof.

This is a broken beam below that area.

The front entrances to the buildings were blocked by the fallen brick. This is my neighbors rear storage area that we have to wade through to get access.

The roofer was by on Thursday and was supposed to tarp the roof but then decided there was too much risk and they had to arrange to get the brick removed and a temporary fix of the hole. Now we have a weekend of heavy rain which we don't need until we can get the roofs covered. :-(

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.

I Am Well But With Very Limited Power and Internet

Hi to all my blogger friends.
I have been hoping to get on internet to let you know that my family and I are all fine after Hurricane Michael tore through last Wednesday 10/10. We had three trees fall on our house putting small holes in the roof. Only one caused ceiling damage in a guest bedroom. There are ceiling water stains in three other rooms.

Our son-in-law's car was crushed by a tree across the midsection. It is totaled. My car was hit by one tree knocking out the rear windshield and another smashing the roof, front windshield and passenger front fender. The insurance adjuster has indicated it will be declared totaled. :-( We are waiting to learn how much they value it at so we can then look for a new used car for me. My husband's jeep also took damage with a busted out rear passenger window. That is repairable and fortunately left us a vehicle to drive.

Our yard looked like a war zone after the winds either blew over, tore from the ground or broke about 90% of the trees in the yard and surrounding woods. Our son-in-law, two of his brothers and a friend were able to remove the trees from our roof and clear out our driveways within three days. It took two days for neighbors to clear our private community road so we could get out to a main road and others could get in. Out of 17 homes in our community only three did not have roof damage. Some had trees through portions of their houses and one had a tree down the center of the home!

My office building was also damaged with brick falling from a fake second story facade and a couple of small windows broken. Water damaged has caused about six ceiling panels to fall in the front room. All equipment had been moved to an interior room so it was untouched. I have been trying to get someone up on the roof to access the condition and cover it with a tarp if needed. I will try again tomorrow. Two offices to the east of mine took terrible damage, more severe than mine.

Our town was hit very hard with trees and powerlines down throughout the county. The responders and volunteers have worked hard getting streets cleared and the main traffic lights operating. We are still on curfew from 7pm to 7am and they are saying that some of us may not have power for 30 days.

Our RV was under a large metal garage cover and it suffered no damage so, unlike most people, we have had generator power and water since the storm. My husband's water treatment center for the house was in a shed that was crushed. Fortunately he was able to re-route the water lines and get water back to the house within two days. We have a generator which my husband had connected to run the refrigerators, the TV and the corner light where I work on my computer. We were running short of propane and gas fuel for the generators but were able to get out on Monday 10/16 to refill the fuel so we should be good for another week.

Our duaghter's home and second office are located in Panama City Beach. They were on the west side of the hurricane and suffered NO damage - just power outage for a week. Heather was able to get back to work on Thursday. I drove 63 miles west to another agent's office to work on a closing on Tuesday. I did not have time to get online then.

Although our modem shows as "connected" we still do not have internet service. I learned today how to tether my phone internet to the computer.  It is extremely slow but at least got me to the blog so I could post this update. It may still be several weeks before I can get back on for normal posting. I am reading on Kindle and listening to Audible on the phone. I will post some pictures when I have better internet capability.

All in all we feel blessed! God protected our lives which is the most important thing. I am hoping to do some work each day as we wait for power to return to the office and home.