October 7, 2022
This week has been a blur. My mom is safe and has a place to stay right next to a great friend of hers. She is doing a-ok despite her world being turned upside down last week.
Cable/internet is still down where we are (Xfinity actually stopped giving estimates on when it would be back today) so cell service is the only way to do anything, and that’s choked with everyone doing the same. So it’s SLOWWWWW. We sat in SBUX this AM for nearly an hour, trying to send 100+ photos to the Flood Insurance Adjuster.
Traffic lights are still flashing red the closer to the water you are. There is so much damaged furniture and personal items on both sides of Gulf Shore Boulevard, Harbour Drive and many other streets that the previously pristine streets of Naples look like town dumps with the piles upon piles of crap lining the sidewalks and pavement.
Homeowner’s only covers things destroyed by wind, and I heard only 20% of Florida homeowners have flood insurance. It’s exorbitantly expensive. But it’s worth it when something like this happens.
There are Serve Pro vans, trucks and semis everywhere. lots of flashing yellow lights. It smells bad in some places – like low tide or sewage.
People are definitely picking through the disposed items. We saw someone walking away with a sea shell they picked out of a huge pile of things, and a guy riding a bike pulling along with him an office chair. If someone can find a use for the stuff, that’s less detritus to wind up in landfill.
I overheard a guy tell people in SBUX today that he lost his condo. Yesterday, I saw a young woman sitting on the ground outside of SBUX with 4 dogs, and two tiny puppies talking about advertising them on Craig’s List as she no longer could care for them all. Everybody knows someone – or a few people – who lost everything.
A lot of the people who lost property and homes are retired, and some of those who can rebuild just don’t even have the energy to rebuild.
Until last night, the city was telling everyone to boil your water before ingesting any. We stuck with bottled water. But this made brewed coffee more of an effort to find. I needed some medicine today, and couldn’t get it at the CVS on 3rd because their computer was not reliably working. So I drove up to Pine Ridge, past so many damaged homes and more trash.
Much of this is manageable. There are people much worse off than we are, but having your home flooded by almost 5 feet of water and being displaced is pretty traumatic. It also doesn’t leave much to take with you to your next place.
But, you really do see the best in people when something like this happens. And of course, the worst – there are the scammers and thieves who will take advantage of people down on their luck. They can all go to hell.
Thanks so much to those who have reached out to ask how they can help or check-in on mom.
Sis and I leave to drive back to Charlotte NC tomorrow, but will be back again soon we think.
Life is really crazy and overwhelming sometimes.
Something that made it that we never could have expected? The china. My mom found this beautiful soup tureen caked in sludge – and it was in perfect shape.
While it is still just “stuff” the china has been with us since my parent’s wedding in 1968, and has been used for holidays and special meals for all those years.
The soup tureen was from my grandmother (who we all still really miss even 26 years after her death.) Something about this item with such history for us making it through this storm seems so poetic in a way.
And maybe, until you are faced with something like this, you never expect you’d make it through. And maybe, like the china, although we are fragile, we are unbreakable.
