and the endless summer good times. This year, it’s a bit different.They watched the news bulletins at home, they gulped and wheezed and shrugged about the good and bad of lovin’ the Florida life. Because the true measure of Ian’s wrath and devastation was not the massive, ripped-out palm trees, the curbside piles of soaked and ruined furniture and mangled soffits, eavestroughs and roof shingles. It was the families crouched on the folding cots in a high school gymnasium makeshift shelter, grateful for Styrofoam containers of donated food and bottled water. And the gentle, tanned and silver-haired 81-year-old, standing dazed and defeated, in front of a stacked heap of the scrap lumber and debris which used to be his home for 40+ years, wondering but not hopeful about finding his 62-year-old wedding pictures or the shelves of knick-knacks his late wife treasured since their honeymoon. Tragic and sad, but Ian’s wrath was merely the most recent reminder about flukes of nature and acts of God. There will be others. another controversial nerve, inflaming Florida’s dragged-out and politically contentious property insurance issue. While some snowbird renters are not directly impacted and watch from the sidelines, many snowbird owners follow the controversy and cringe about even higher property insurance rates. Ian inflicted a lot of damage, expected to be between $40 billion and $64 billion for flood and wind losses to Florida residential and commercial properties, and the majority of property damages were caused by water and flooding. For tense and anxious weeks after the apocalyptic September 28, the raging scramble was determining and documenting, case by case and claim by claim, whether the damage was caused by wind, which is covered, or flooding, which is often not covered in many areas of Florida. While people and contractors slugged away at the mammoth clean-up task, the hurricane scraped off the scab of Florida’s property insurance crisis. It underscored and exposed the glaring flaws in the state’s fragile property insurance market, which has lost more than $1 billion in each of the last two years. According to recent stats, hundreds of thousands of Floridians have had their policies dropped or not renewed. Much of the argument is about availability and cost. While hurricane wind damage is usually covered, flood damage is usually not. In fact, in some areas, flood insurance is either not even offered or it is sky-high unaffordable, costing as much as $1,000 per month. The steady stream of anxious, upbeat but somewhat apprehensive snowbirds started to arrive. There were gasps and sighs and a lot of head shaking. Some neighbourhoods looked battered and very, very rough. Some snowbird-fave eateries and stores weathered the crunch, and some did not. But gradually, dragging beach chairs and coolers and slathering sunscreen resumed. Safari-hatted snowbird golfers were back, perfecting their swings and putts. And snowbird life, although a little bruised, went on. Harmlessly (and even charmingly) strange but, sometimes, snowbirds do get understandably jaded about the irresistible contrast of it all. The soothing relaxation. The sun. The fairways.The beach.The no-stress disconnect Special Report Photos: NOAA CSANews | WINTER 2022 | 17
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