An email from my grandma spurred this post. I’ll post part of the email as reference. Some things to consider are my grandma lives in Ocean Springs, MS which is just east of Biloxi. If you had watched the news coverage about this back in August and Septemeber, you know these were some of the worst hit areas. The second thing is my grandma’s house is on a hill. She only had minimal damage to her house and yard. Most of her fence blew down and some shingles on her roof blew off. The only other casualty was her fridge which she had to replace because she wasn’t expecting to be gone for 3 weeks.

The situation down here is terrible. Your grandmother was indeed blessed. There are tons, and I mean tons of people without homes. In the first place FEMA and the insurance companies cannot make up their mind about where people should live. If you rebuild or reconstruct where you were living, they will not give you a dime and probably won’t insure you, until they decide what the flood level is, etc. So people are out of work as this applies to businesses also. Their kids have to go to school. Very few have the RV’s that FEMA furnished and the people who were lucky enough to stay in a hotel or motel have to be out by Dec, 1. Consequently people have either permanently relocated, are living in shelters, in tents(has been 35 degrees at night),or with family and friends. The roads are a mess.Ocean Springs was very lucky compared to the other communities. It is unbelievable! The storm surge came in at 35 feet and did massive damage. What really saved my house was the “hill”.

Believe me, this is one Thanksgiving I am very thankful!

It seems that the nation, including myself, has completely forgotten about these people. I guess I just figured that they’d rebuild and life would go on. Apparently not so for some. The same insurance companies who were all proud of having agents on the scene and being so helpful are the ones who are the problem now.

I wonder why it is taking them so long to figure out this “flood level.” I don’t know if they are talking about a future level or if they are talking about where the water actually reached. I could see them saying we won’t insure you if you build your home below a certain elevation. On one hand, this makes sense. You wouldn’t go build a house in the middle of a lake (all building restrictions aside). But this is different. I’d be willing to bet most of the people didn’t choose where the house was, they moved into it. They just moved in. I’m sure the last thing they were thinking was, “Boy, if a hurricane came through here, we won’t be able to rebuild.”

Now you might say these people can move on and build elsewhere. Well what if you have kids who go to school. Maybe you can’t find anywhere to build in the same school district and now your kid has to change schools. I’m guessing the land in these areas is devalued now so even selling it you aren’t going to get much. In that case, people rely on insurance to help them out. As my grandma said, this applies to businesses as well so many are unemployed.

I could go on for quite awhile about all the bad situations this puts people in, but I’ll hold my tounge (or fingers in this case). I plead with insurance companies to just get through the red tape and bullshit and help people out. It’s not about the $$$ all the time.