Our Home Was Destroyed by Hurricane Milton… What We Learned

Well, we are sitting where our dining room table used to be. And as you can see, that is no longer what it is. And yes, there is a mess behind us because uh congratulations to us. We are still moving in and still going through renovations. Still going through renovation. 7 months later of living in an RV, but who's counting on our front lawn, over six figures in repair and renovation there. We're going to get into that. Okay. Kate has been all over this thing. But we wanted to share with you guys, you know, you know, 7 months ago, you know, October 9th of 2024, Hurricane Milton swept through the Tampa Bay area. Um, and our home was one of the casualties. And, uh, through all of that, through all of that, we're somehow still loving it. Still loving it. Um, even with living in a RV in our front yard and having to go from an inside to an outside to an inside to use a bathroom for 7 months. Um, we'd still do it again even if our we knew our house would flood. Yeah. The premise of today's video is to bring you up to speed. So, if you're new here, welcome. My name is Juan Alkala. I'm Kate Ala and we make videos that are all things Tampa Bay. What it's like to live here, what it's like to play here, um, and what it's like to deal with the challenges of living here as well. And the one thing we've done on this channel, I feel very well, is always be transparent with you guys. And we've made videos in the past, which you guys can go look up, showing the original flooding damage that we had to the house. Um, we didn't get storm surge from Hurricane Milton. We got wet because of the rain. And we're going to get into the weeds on that a little bit today, but I want to bring everybody up to speed with where we are in our current repair renovation. Yeah. Um, also, you know, address the elephant in the room, which is this is part of living coastal life, right? And we're going to get into that today because the question always is, would you guys do it again? And yeah, we're we're here right now, right? You guys are seeing it behind us. So, we're going to get into that today. And if you're new here, we're glad to bring you guys up to speed on what's going on. So, the first thing I want to do is take the time to thank Kate for joining us on camera because she's not a huge fan of having this camera in her face. You keep saying that, but you keep putting the camera in my face. That's true. But it's usually like twice a year. So, you guys got her now. And the hopefully if you've watched any of our previous videos, you know how we share. And I, you know, I know that some people will hear what we're going to share today. Um, and maybe some of these numbers are going to be shocking to you, but the thing that we pride ourselves on is sharing the whole truth. Nothing but the truth. Right. Yeah. Our story. Yes. And because you know there's a cost of living in paradise. And today we're going to discuss that. And going back to October 9th, um, we knew Hurricane Milton was coming in. Hurricane Helen had just been here 13 days prior. Uh, 13 days prior, I mean, what was it, 11 days prior to that, I was down at the beach helping people who had been flooded out of their homes, 4 ft of water. Um, we're just a little over 2 miles from from the beach. Um, so we shouldn't get storm surge. We didn't, by the way. We'll walk you through how we got wet. Um, but I was down there helping people whose completely lost everything, right? They they lost all of their belonging belongings. You know, the houses were flooded, completely damaged, and in no way, shape, or form could I ever saw us 13 days later being in the same exact position. No. So, we evacuated because we have a ginormous tree in our front yard. And full disclosure, we thought that we were basically more concerned of the tree falling on our house. And if you're in the middle of a storm and a tree falls on your house, there's nothing you can do. There's no one you're going to call. So, we decided to evacuate. We did not think that we were going to come home to a soaking wet house. Yes. And as we pulled up, we saw in the neighborhood that water had made it up to, you know, halfway on on people's uh lawns cuz you could see like all the debris and stuff that had pushed up there. Um same thing for us. We didn't see anything out of the ordinary right up front. But as we got out of the car and started to walk up to the house, I could see water standing on the side of the house and that started to make me a little bit anxious. And as we opened the garage door, you could see that, you know, there was probably a couple inches of water that had got in there at some point. Now, our garage is lower than our our living level. Yeah. So there there's some we're like, "Okay, there's a little bit of hope." So I I opened the door from our garage into our laundry room, and we have a rug in there, and the moment I stepped in, it just went squish. Yeah. And you could no fudge came out of your mouth. I think it was a no fudge. Um that's here we are being full. Yeah. Yeah. It was a squish and water seeped out from underneath my feet and then there was an additional door to go into the living space. And when I went to open it because everything was swollen and so much humidity and moisture was in the house, I ripped the door open and the trim immediately came off. And it was just from that moment of just I don't it was you just walk through of like is this real life right now? Yeah, it was definitely a a difficult moment. And we go back and watch the previous video. I know we're putting some clips in here for you guys to view right now, but as we walk through each rug was squishy and um you know ultimately I think we would ended up being okay at some level. Our walls are plaster and not drywall. Our home is block so it's not stick built. There's a lot of things that that are good with that. Um, but the thing that was a challenge was um, our bedrooms had engineered hardwoods back from like the '9s where it was like the 4-in strip. And what I mean by engineered is it's really only hardwood on top and then is all layered underneath. And what happens is concrete is porous. So, it ended up pulling in water from outside through the block and it started getting in underneath the flooring. And within a couple days, even though we were running industrial humidifiers and everything under the sun, we weren't able to get all the humidity out and moisture out of the home and then it started to take over the wood. So, we ended up having to get the um Hi, sweet. Hi, Stella. So, we ended up having to tear up the floors and um that was in high demand. Not only had we just had a a hurricane 13 days prior, but here we are, you know, 13 days later and now we need our floors tear torn out. Now, we waited about a week, right? We tried everything to save it cuz we tried. We talked to all kinds of different people who were in and out of houses who helped in situations like this and they're like based upon my experience you guys might be okay. Like our this area that you see right now was already ceramic tile so that wasn't of a concern. Now grout is porous so there still is that level and we also didn't see how it was installed. So me being me and a mom of like complete fear of mold and mildew and having allergies to it on top I was like take it all out. But we wanted to dry it out. So, we ran fans, we ran humidifiers, we got all the water out as much as we could. We ripped baseboards off the walls and drilled holes all down just to help with air flow. Um, and a lot of people told us like, however, the best way to do the airflow is to make sure you're making it in a circular motion. So, plant the fans accordingly to so you're constantly creating throughout your house. Um, so we thought we were okay. And then um he went to rip out just in the hallway just to see what was going on some pieces of the engineered hardwood and I was standing in the hallway with him and within 30 seconds I was in a fit. I my throat was itchy and scratchy. I could feel it in my ears. I was like, "Nope, you need to stop doing that. There's clearly something going on there." Um so at that point, that was when we started making the calls um for someone to come and demo the floors. And if they're bringing in the machines to demo, you know, over half the house that are hardwood, we just took it as, well, we might as well do the flooring that we want throughout the whole house. Yep. So, to give you guys a little bit of backstory, we're 43 ft above sea level where we live. So, we're not we're we're in what's known as flood zone X. Technically, in the United States, every home is in a flood zone. Okay? Uh, but the way that FEMA uses the maps and the way that mortgage companies require you to have insurance is once you get outside of X, you're required to carry some sort of insurance here in Florida where we are. Um, but we're in X 43 ft above sea level. If storm surge ever reaches our front front door, the world has changed literally. Right. And we're in a non-evac zone. Yes. So non-evacuation zone, meaning that we we aren't um mandatory evac when they start calling uh letters, we they never get to us because we're so high. doesn't mean it's not wise. Like like we said, we left. But the why I'm sharing all this and getting the details is because we don't have flood insurance. We're not required to carry it. And ultimately, the burden of your home getting wet once you have once you don't have flood insurance, if the home floods from rainwater or sewage or anything else, you're not covered. And I'm sharing this with you guys because for the policy of roughly $430 a year, we could have had our home covered in some capacity. So, we ended up eating the entire cost of this renovation. But just a caveat, um, make sure that if you do choose to put a flood insurance policy, when you don't have to, dive into that because there are different levels of every single flood policy. Is it flood from sewage backup? Is it flood from rain coming in? Is it flood from rising waters? We were flood from rising waters that intruded into our house. So that it is a different policy than sewage flood. Correct. So definitely talk to an insurance agent on that and dig into like these are all the possible scenarios. What do I need? Yeah. Cuz the irony is if that tree would have fallen on our house and then the water would have rushed in through that hole, it would have been covered by insurance. Now, there are still lots of people waiting for checks. Our entire coast, you know, people have just decided to go ahead and do the renovations, fix the home, whatever it was, just to get themselves back in their house cuz there are way too many people still living in RVs, y'all. Just so you know. Um, there are still pods in people's driveways. You know, a lot of things out there. And we're being transparent with this because, you know, se almost 7 years ago, it would be 7 years in December, we sold everything we own, packed up our family of five, and moved 12,200 m south here to the greater Tampa Bay area because we're beach babies. And honestly, we've been loving it ever since. 100%. Still do. Still do. And I think, you know, we're not trying to to hide that as a hook for you guys. um transparently and I know you've used that word a few times but like honestly and openly this is the worst case scenario outside of a loss of life and what what do I mean by that is like having to do this entire thing on our own financially has been a huge undertaking number one number two we have kids and like Kate said we're living in an RV there yes there is a bathroom in there can't use it cuz there's nowhere to put the um the sewage so we don't use that. We do have running clean water and we just let the gray water go out because wash sink dishes or whatever. Um, but we were coming in to go to the bathroom and y'all that can be very challenging every time somebody 6-year-old or any year old who at 3:00 in the morning has to go to the bathroom and now you're running around, you know, everywhere to go do that. It's just it's mentally and emotionally taxing. So to say that it wasn't or isn't hard like remove the financial piece of it like it's it's been heavy, y'all. And we're not sitting here like playing light-heartedness with this. Like we we've taken some blows and it's hurt and it's been taxing. We've struggled like I'm sometimes I was super prickly and not very kind or gracious. Um and I probably still will be at times and same thing with my kids, but as you guys also know like we homeschool our kids and we work from home. So there's been a lot of dynamics and this isn't a Saab story for like woes us. We know people who have had it even worse, but for us personally, this was like the worst case for like we have been homeschooling, working from home, and we went from a 2,000t home to a 200t box on wheels. Um that moves when the wind blows. Yeah. And but there's also different parts, right? Like the just the camper alone was a blessing that we were provided. So anyways, I don't want to go great family loan that to us. And the reason we're sharing this today ultimately is because we want to expose everybody to not only the the paradise portion of living here, which it is. I mean, it's Hane too. It's beautiful, but this is this is the reality. This is the worst case scenario, like I said, outside of loss of life, which, you know, that is ultimately what we feel extremely blessed about. Now, I want to get into the the the numbers and the ramifications. Okay. So, we did make a claim because I don't want to be someone who is um uh is committing fraud, right? like not telling our insurance company that our house got wet. Technically would be committing fraud. Right now, I knew they weren't going to do anything because this is Florida. I live near the coast and no insurance company's going to pay if they don't have to. And of course, they don't have to cuz we don't have flood. So, we were in a position where we had to make a decision about how we were going to approach repairing the home. Um, again, we had some concerns about some things. Some paint was peeling up around around the wall. Our floors were concrete. We're on a on a concrete slab cuz we're in Florida. We have an all block home. very little wood in the interior walls to begin with. So, we knew we could recover from that, but we we knew we were going to have a mold and mildew test and all those other things. And it became obvious we were going to have to tear out the kitchen. Um, it got wet. We could listen, we could have made it work, but it wasn't going to be great and it was dangerous. So, yeah. And like to touch on that, so our cabinets were also sitting on MDF that got wet. So, we could have rode it out, but what is the stability of that later on down the road? Or if they get wet again and now they just crumble and now they are a physical safety hazard. Um, so it was just there was a lot of things that we had to come to Jesus meeting of, you know, what are we going to do, what are we not going to do, what can we wait on, what can't we wait on. Um, yeah. And so ultimately we made the decision knowing that we could get back and we we got quotes from contractors that it cost us about $7,000 to get all the flooring tore out, which is crazy. But those guys could charge whatever they wanted at that time. Um and getting tile off the floor, hardwood, it is glued down the concrete when it was throwing her into its I just had to hire a pro. So we did. Um I I don't love the fact that I had to pay that much money, but that was the reality of it. We got it out, we dried out the house, and then we had a mold and mildew test, which came back clean. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. And that's the other So, we waited a solid month um before we did that air quality test because mold doesn't just grow overnight, right? Like we wanted to make sure the house was dry, do all of that. We talked to a home inspector who also does mold and mildew um and air quality tests of what what do we need to do to make sure that the house is ready to be tested based upon everything that just happened. and they walked us through dehumidifiers, fans, everything needs to be off for a minimum of 48 hours before we're even going to come cuz we don't want anything to skew the numbers. I was like, "Okay, let's just go 72 for the peace of mind." Um, so we did all of that and he did the laser test, the or not laser, I don't even know, infrared. Yeah. Well, whatever the whole gambit, air quality testing went through and we were an inch up already. So, he could even see inside of the walls at some capacity. Yeah. So, we, you know, we went through through that and then at that point we had to make the decision, right? What are we going to do? Are we going to leave the original tile floors in which were already dated? Those types of things. Do we even have the finances to make this happen? And at the time, y'all, I'm just going to be honest with you. We we really didn't. I mean, we we could make some things work. We could we were going to be able to get back in the house. That wasn't ever a question. But going like full renovation, which we wanted to do anyways, but we didn't want to be told by a hurricane when that was going to happen. Um, nor were we prepared to do that. But that's where we are today. And you know, Kate knows the numbers in detail. I think that we'll just leave that. We might come back and share an entire video breakdown of what this is. Um, but ultimately we're over six figures at this point. Um, now what did we get for all of that, right? So, you know, we've got all of our cabinetry in the entire house at this point, bathrooms included, is all real wood. No MDF in the house. All the trim is real wood. Doors are solid core. Solid core. And I'm sharing this with you guys because wood can get wet and recover, right? Uh wood, MDF, wood, yeah, things of that natur. So now we put ourselves in a position that if this were to ever happen again, at the same level that it did, not worse. Correct. I can't promise that. At the same level that we did get wet, um we should be okay outside of furniture and mile pieces. Don't mind her. Uh Jonathan's here to take care of the pool. So, you know, we made some decisions about what we were going to do, right? So, we decided to redo the kitchen entirely. We um removed a half faux wall here to open up the space, lifted the ceiling up on that short side. Um you know, did a lot of work. And we'll show we're going to show you guys what we did at at a different time when the house is finished. We're really close. They're working on putting in the doors, which you can probably see all the way in the back corner over there. um you know and and putting the b the trim on and and you know she's going to get the house that we probably dreamed of and um we're excited for that but definitely didn't want to have to go that way. We're working on the the water mitigation on the outside. The reason that we got wet is we got over 100 ines of rain prior to the storm in just the summer month. So like from mid June to September. Yep. And then what ended up happening was is Milton came and then there was like 12 ines of rain in 6 hours or whatever and it just overwhelmed the entire yard. And uh you know so the house didn't, you know, completely get washed over. We're sitting on the same couch that was in here. It was completely clean when it was going on. So um you know, some things had some issues, some didn't. But why we're sharing this, the lessons that we learned from this that are super important are um it's not just about the elevation of the home, right? It's the the one specific house. It's about your neighbors and why this happened to us. And y'all, we're real estate agents and we've helped over a hundred families relocate to this area in the last 2 and 1/2 years alone. And I'm proud to say that none of them got wet like we did. Um, a lot of them chose new construction over that time period, and that has a lot to do with it. But the reality is our home sits a foot foot and a half shorter than each neighbor on on on the sides. And you don't know until you're overwhelmed with water that's a problem. Our neighbors behind us were a different phase of this subdivision and they are clearly two or three feet higher. So, we were kind of like the low point where all the water ran through. Now, I'm sharing this with you guys because one of the lessons we learned was not only to look at our elevation now, the elevation of the property, look at the elevation of the neighbors. You can find this on a lot of the county records. Our team helps a lot with clients on this at this point. Um, make sure you get a flood policy. I even if you're not required to do it, that peace of mind for 450 bucks or whatever your number is going to be depending on where you live, risk factor is going to be a lot lower depending on certain areas. If you're not required to carry flood insurance and you have that policy, it is a very inexpensive piece of mind because listen y'all, if I paid that policy for the next 50 years, that wouldn't even have covered the first purchase and tear out of the floor, right? So like it it was something I wish we would have done. We we're putting that in place now. So, we're all set on that. We're working through the mitigation. We'll walk you guys through that in the future and what that looks like. But, you know, the question is, would you do it all over again? And, you know, people ask us that all the time, and we're not going anywhere. We're we're renovating the house, right? We could if we were going somewhere, we would have just we would have already gone, number one, or we would have repaired the house to we would have hit the easy button of repair. Um, Home Depot kitchen, right? Like just Which is totally fine. vinyl floors what I wanted. Yep. And and she, you know, she's going to have a beautiful home now. That is literally He lives here, too, right? Yeah. But it's built to withstand the challenges of Florida. We got tile floor all the way through the house. Like everything is the way that it should be to best prepare for this. So, again, wanted to to jump on today, give you guys an update, welcome new people. And I'm sorry. I know it feels like we're probably rand This is not scripted. We're just sharing. And one of the things that I love about what we've been able to do with this channel is we help people, you know, make decisions about moving to the Tampa Bay area. And if this scares you, I understand because it should be a heck yes or no, right? And for us, it was a heck yes to get here. We knew the risk. We, you know, here we are and and the potentially the worst case scenario out, like I said, outside of the the biggest challenge. We're very grateful for that. Um, but we're here. Could if this ever happened again, will we be frust? Yeah. But we do love it. And yeah, and it's just like we learned a lot by going through this of say it happens all over again and we didn't put in tile floor and we didn't put in solid wood, we would know better how to mitigate the problem faster and probably a little bit more budget friendly. Um because we also learned a lot of hard mistakes by like vet your contractors, y'all. Please vet your contractors. We had to fire the first one. We're not even going to get into that. No, but they're working for you in your home or your second home or your investment property. Like, vet them, dive in, ask questions, check chat GPT. What question should I ask on how to handle X, Y, and Z? Because the better you're informed to go through a renovation, whether it's just to renovate a house or whether it's to repair because of storm damage or a natural disaster, um the more that you can educate yourself on how to take care of the home and set it up and then best ask that contractor question, the better that you guys can work together as a unit cuz they're working with you to create this. Um because it came with a lot of hard lessons of like we already had conversations like man if we knew three months ago what this would be we would have done this before but now we're at this crossroads again of well we can't do that now because we've already inlaid tile floor throughout the house or whatever the case may be. Yeah. And we're 10 days out from hurricane season. And that's really why we wanted to bring this video to you. Right. Like we're not even back in the house officially. Our bedroom doesn't have a door on it. Our bed's not in there. Um but we're not we have to get the house ready. We have to get everything secured, water mitigated, which we're, you know, working on all those things and feel great about it. But the reality is if you want to live coastal, I mean like right by the water, right? These things can happen. Even if you want to live inland, if you're downstream of rivers or creeks or things like that, there were areas that were affected that were nowhere near rising north of us for weeks after the earthquake. Exactly. So, make sure that you're looking at those things. If you have more questions about moving to the area, please feel free to reach out to me and the team. All of my contact information is in the description below. There's a link to my calendar. We can, you know, bust open Google Maps, show you what, you know, what's going on in the area, keep you guys in the best possible position and not ever have this happen to you. Like I said, we've moved over 100 families here. None of them had this happen to them. So, so I'd rather it happen to us than them, honestly. Absolutely. But we can get you through, you know, some of those challenges and help you understand the risk involved in order to get to paradise. Yeah. And if you do get wet, we have full system to help dry your house out. Well, we're going to make sure that that doesn't happen for you guys. All right. We we are grateful for your time and your attention. We will continue to update you guys on the house. When the house is completely done, you're she's going to give you a tour um of some sort. So, you know, she's still has um we want to make sure that we protect our kids. So, um we but we'll share with you guys what we did cuz she's done some really cool stuff for the kitchen from um you know, drawers and all kinds. I can't wait for you guys to see it. So, we're excited to do that. If you have questions, like I said, reach out and and as always and until next time, go out and live that Tampa life. Bye y'all. [Music]