Aftermath of Hurricane Michael
It has already been a long week. As I'm sure all of you know, Hurricane Michael made landfall on Wednesday afternoon near Mexico Beach, just ~45 miles from St. George Island. Over the last two days, we have had many, many of you reach out to us to share your support and prayers with us, our homes and the rest of St. George Island. Thank you so much to all of you that have reached out to us!
We wanted to give a brief update on the storm and its impact to the island. Generally speaking, I think most would agree that St. George Island fared better than most people would have expected early Wednesday morning. Instead of taking a north-easterly path like most forecasters expected, Michael moved almost due north on Tuesday and Wednesday before it made landfall. Despite making landfall 45 miles away, St. George Island still experienced a major event. Storm surge reached 14 feet, winds were recorded near 90 mph and waves off of the coast of St. George Island measured as high as 41 feet!
The bridge to the island opened late this afternoon, so as of right now we have little information about the condition of homes on the island. We did, however, find coverage of the damage on the island from the Tallahassee Democrat. Unfortunately, our home, Serene Dream, was a featured picture of the damage on SGI. From what we can tell from the picture (seen below), all of the siding and the deck rails on the west side of the house have come completely off. A neighbor has suggested that there is no flood damage to Serene Dream, but as I said, we really don't know for sure.
For Sand Dollar and Sea Dunes, we know almost nothing. The St. George Plantation (the gated community where Sand Dollar and Sea Dunes are located) has notified us that there has been no "catastrophic" damage to any homes in the Plantation. However, many homes have damage to roofs and siding. Nearly all beach walkovers have been damaged and many septic systems have been damaged. There is also as much as 3 feet of sand on some of the neighborhood roads.
If you follow our Facebook pages, you probably know that we were informed on Tuesday afternoon (yes the day before Hurricane Michael made landfall) that our wind insurance policy had been cancelled for Sea Dunes. We are still working to straighten things out, but please pray that we can get this resolved. So far the bank that has our mortgage and the insurance carrier have been very willing to try to straighten this out. Wind insurance is obviously extremely important when you have a hurricane.
We hope to get more information about our three homes tomorrow. The bridge to the island has reopened, but the Plantation has not opened to owners (as far as we are aware). That should happen tomorrow afternoon. At that point we should get more information.
Thank you again for all of your prayers and support. We have been so encouraged by all of our past renters that have reached out to us over the last two days. We will continue to keep you updated in the coming days.
I'll end this blog with some pictures that we've gathered over the last two days of the devastation from Hurricane Michael on and around St. George Island.
