This was our neighborhood in The Village of Caroline. We lived on Pomaria Place at the bottom of the picture. In the lower right hand corner, you’ll see a palm tree. Our house was the next one on the cul-de-sac. The second street up is Scotia Street, and the one at the top is Norris Way. This picture was taken several days after the tornado struck. The initial clean-up had already begun.
When we got into our house on Sunday morning the utilities were operational. We had water, electricity and gas. The house was, for the most part, secure. The hole in the roof that Jim and John repaired was at the rear of the house and appeared to be our biggest problem. Everything inside was secure but wet. Our furniture was just as we left it on Wednesday evening.
The back wall of the kitchen had a distinctive bow, and the seals on the adjacent sliding glass door were bulging. The wood trim around the door and kitchen window had expanded, and the nails securing the trim were pulled out about a quarter of an inch. The carpet in the dining room and living room, and the tile floor of the kitchen, was wet. When Ruth checked the kitchen cupboards, she found water in the cups and bowls, but no sign of entry.
Work crews had begun the clean-up process loading loose pieces of construction materials in trucks and trailers. It was tedious work, all done by hand. All of the construction workers working in The Villages, an army of no less than five-hundred men, invaded each neighborhood and drove up and down each street at least twice a day. They picked up siding, shingles, drywall, sheathing, mounds of insulation, paper, pieces of broken furniture, parts of cars and golf carts, broken glass, and all sorts of housewares. Each time the wind stirred, more debris fell from the trees or blew in from someone else’s yard. This went on for several days.
I remember Sunday afternoon, after the army made its second pass, the neighborhood was eerily quiet. You couldn’t hear a sound, not even the wind. And then I recalled my conversation with Uncle Harry on the prior Sunday when we talked about the noise coming from the pickleball court. There was no such sound this Sunday, because the courts were gone.
Meanwhile, roofers began to stretch blue tarps over roofs to secure the interior of homes with hope of restoration. There were hundreds of them. As for ours, two roofers stopped at our house on that first Sunday. Each climbed up on the roof, looked into the hole, and came back with the same report. “You have broken rafters.” Broken rafters meant the monumental job of tearing off the top of the house.
Jim had a friend, Terry, whose company poured all of the concrete foundations throughout The Villages. Jim called Terry seeking assistance. Terry called the builder who constructed our house, and the builder reached out to his roofer. His roofer knew the ins and outs of our house and arrived bright and early Monday morning. He knew how to access the rafters from inside the house. He climbed his ladder, went in through the access door, and emerged about fifteen minutes later. I’ll never forget what he said.
“I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news is, you’ve got a broken rafter. The good news is, it’s somebody else’s rafter.” The hole in our roof was caused when a broken rafter from some other house was blown into ours.
We signed a contract with a water extraction company. They set up several commercial fans and two massive dehumidifiers to suck the moisture from the house. It sounded like an airplane was idling in our living room, but we slept there anyway.
By Monday afternoon several insurance companies set up a trailer village at the Laurel Manor Recreation Center, so they could work with clients whose homes had been impacted. We met with an adjuster who took our information and scheduled an appointment to tour our damage on Tuesday morning. He went room to room, examining each corner and crevasse, and when he was done he said, “I estimate your damages will cost $30,000. I’ve included an allotment to replace a quarter of your roof. If the roof costs more, let me know, and we’ll make an adjustment.” We had a check for $30,000 by the end of the week. When we met with the roofer to arrange for the roof to be repaired, he informed us that Florida law required that the entire roof be replaced in circumstances like ours. After contacting our adjuster with the news, we received a second check for $7,000 a few days later.
We were among the lucky ones hit by the tornado. In its aftermath, I told people, “We just got winged.” The houses on our street were able to be repaired. I did a bit of wandering on the day we arrived. I cut through some yards to see the damage on Scotia Street. If you look at the picture, you’ll see a white blotch on the fourth house on the north side of the street. The blotch is a white SUV.
As I walked down the street that day, I met a man looking at a SUV that appeared to have backed through the front door of the house. The back half of the vehicle was in the house and the front was in the flower bed. When I spoke to him, I asked, “Is this your house?”
He replied, “No, but that’s my car. It was in my garage when I went to bed last night. I live across the street, down at the corner.”
Everyone on Norris Way lost their entire house. If they weren’t blown to the ground by the tornado, they were condemned during their inspection. Each home had a family, and each family had a story.
TBC