More Than A Year After Michael, FL Panhandle Residents Feeling Forgotten; Federal Funding Stuck

A year after Hurricane Michael struck North Florida, thousands of Panhandle residents still live in tents, trailers and hotel rooms, homeowners continue to fight their insurance companies over repairs, and children attend school in portable classrooms, flinching every time it thunders.

Michael struck Mexico Beach with 155 mph winds and a 15-foot storm surge that swamped beachfront houses and businesses, flattening the gulf resort town. It plowed through the center of the sparsely populated rural Panhandle region of about 330,000 residents, cutting a 30- to 40-mile-wide swath between Panama City and Port St. Joe all the way to Georgia, pulverizing small towns and chewing up billions of dollars in timber, cotton and peanuts.

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Even President Trump, who was elected with the help of this heavily red-leaning region, said he was not sure he had ever heard of a Category 5 hurricane when Dorian was bearing down on the Bahamas, 11 months after Michael had wiped Mexico Beach off the map. “Collectively we’ve forgotten them,” said Florida Sen. Bill Montford, a former Leon County high school principal and school superintendent who grew up in Blountstown. “Our memory is shorter than the impact of that storm, and that’s what we’re facing. For us it’s very personal. When you are living in a tent, when you are hungry, a month is a very long time. After eight months people start to lose their patience.”


As Montford frequently likes to remind folks at town hall meetings and legislative committee hearings, eight months is how long it took for Congress to approve a $19 billion emergency disaster relief aid package for several national disasters since 2017, including Michael. It’s intended to supplement the $1.9 billion in funding already obligated by FEMA and other federal agencies for people in the 12 counties clobbered by Michael – a fraction of the total $16.5 billion in both insured and uninsured property losses.

It isn’t as if FEMA officials are standing on street corners handing out checks and money orders. Governments have to spend money to get money. People have to apply for grants and loans, and often as not, don’t qualify or get rejected. “There’s a lot of needs in this county,” Calhoun County Commission Chairman Gene Bailey said at a town hall meeting held in the county courthouse basement.

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https://desdemonadespair.net/2019/10/hurricane-michael-survivors-hanging-on-one-year-later-thousands-of-panhandle-residents-still-live-in-tents-trailers-and-hotel-rooms-collectively-weve-forgotten.html