Survivors of Hurricane Michael in the Panhandle Florida fear being forgotten

MEXICO BEACH, Florida – The huge piles of debris that lined Highway 98 have now disappeared six months after the 16-foot storm caused by Hurricane Michael pulverized this city. But there are still small berms of waste: concrete blocks, reinforcing bars, pipes and planks, mounted like artificial dunes on the side of the road.

The landscape is still swept by the bare sand and the earth, devoid of trees and plants. The few long-time residents who are still talking about losing their way because they have no landmarks. The casual tourist passes, astonished by the persistent destruction of the storm, which landed on October 10, with wind speeds of up to 155 mph.

"You kind of want to believe that everything is fine now," said Priscilla Moore, 51, of Powder Springs, Ga., Who has been vacationing here for 47 years. "But oh my God, it's gone, everything is gone."

The Florida coast east of Panama City is known as the Forgotten Coast because it is very rural and undeveloped – a remnant of a wild Florida, pre-Disney and air conditioned. This nickname became increasingly hot as a result of the fourth most powerful hurricane, as measured by the speed of the wind, which never hit the continental United States.

Government agencies have cleared roads and utilities have restored electricity, water and communications, but thousands of people are still desperate for permanent housing, fighting over not just the lack of rental housing available, but also construction workers entered the country. area.

Many residents live in damaged homes or caravans unfit for habitation. Some live in tents. Homeowners are frustrated with insurance companies and the government's dizzying paperwork. They are suspicious of shady entrepreneurs.

Hurricane Michael was the worst storm ever recorded for the Florida Panhandle. His destruction is still visible. (Charlotte Kesl / For the Washington Post)

Inner Marianna (6,000 inhabitants), the federal prison With its payroll of 500 people is almost closed, its inmates and employees have been transferred to other federal institutions. Jim Dean, director of the city, has just recovered his debris. The institution for delayed development, which serves 250 clients, has just been.

Residents here are wondering if their American compatriots understand their ongoing struggle. Charitable donations flowing into the region have been modest. The American Red Cross has calculated that donations designated for the victims of Hurricane Michael amounted to $ 35 million until the end of March. Hurricane Florence, which hit the Carolinas a month earlier, brought in $ 64.3 million. Hurricane Irma, who hit land near Naples, Florida, a year earlier, generated $ 97 million in donations. Hurricane Harvey, which devastated South Texas in 2017, drew $ 522.7 million.

Michael caused 49 deaths and more than 5.5 billion dollars worth of damage. Work crews removed 31 million cubic meters of debris left by Hurricane Michael in Florida, against 3 million for Hurricane Irma, a much larger storm that hit the entire peninsula in 2017, according to TJ Dargan, federal coordinator responsible for response and recovery efforts after Hurricane Michael of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Because Michael arrived so quickly – by unleashing the Panhandle 73 hours only after it became a nomadic tropical storm – and affecting relatively few people in a rural corner of the Deep South, the storm was overshadowed by d & # 39; 39, other disasters. That was between the floods that devastated North Carolina after Hurricane Florence in September and the fires that devastated northern California in November.

"To a certain extent, he has never really penetrated the American psyche," Dargan said.

But Congress has failed to pass a major bill on supplemental disaster relief funding to fund the long-term recovery of Michael and other disasters across the country. The 35-day government shutdown initially delayed action, and then President Trump and his Republican allies clashed with Democrats over funding allocated to hurricane recovery in Puerto Rico.

The partisanship in Washington does not sit well here on the Panhandle.

"We have as many Democrats suffering as Republicans and we need help. We are all in the same boat, "said Philip Griffitts, chairman of the Bay County Commission and Republican.

Al Cathey, the mayor of Mexico Beach, said his government had failed to pass a bill in the event of a disaster. Sitting on a pile of drywall outside his hardware store, Cathey scanned the ravaged landscape.

"This whole bill is compromised because of the small size," he said.

On a Bay County country road, Sam Summers, a heavy equipment operator, and his wife, Sherry Skinner-Summers, who works for the Sheriff's Department, opened their five-acre lot to people whose houses and caravans were destroyed. thunderstorm.

The backyard population is reduced to six out of ten tents, occupied by families and people who can not find or afford hotel rooms or apartments and pass a check of their antecedents . The Summers and their donors provide the tents.

A family of four, including a six-month-old baby, lives with the Summers in their rambler. According to Summers, other families are expected to arrive in the coming days as a result of his wife's requests on social networks.

FEMA said representatives of the agency, as well as state and county officials, visited the Summers property in mid-March and were avoided by campers.

"During this visit and previous visits, all but a couple of people refused to talk to anyone," said a FEMA spokesperson in an email.

Local residents continue to believe that federal, provincial and local governments are not doing everything in their power to contribute to the recovery.

FEMA has paid for 283 families to live in temporary housing for six months, a period that expires on Tuesday. The county and the state have requested a 90-day extension; this week, FEMA gave 60 days and only 17 families qualify.

"What it means is Tuesday, about 800 people will lose their homes without any place to go, "said Griffitts.

The army is counting on Congress to pass the Disaster Financing Bill to help rebuild Tyndall Air Force Base, which has been hit hard by the hurricane.

"Inside the fence, morale is pretty good," said Base Commander Colonel Brian Laidlaw. "But I also recognize that you have to fan those flames. If we can get help from the federal government in the form of a supplement, it will only keep the momentum going. "

The next big challenge is the forest fire season, which lasts until July. According to Jim Karels, director of the Florida Forest Service, the storm destroyed 72 million tonnes of wood. No more than 15% was transported to sawmills and paper mills. The rest is still on the ground – an impending disaster.

"All this pine is drying. The needles are all brown. Highly flammable, "said Karels. "I'm afraid we can go from one catastrophic event to another."

Slashed trees also represent a huge loss of economic security for those who rely on wood as an investment. Some 16,000 landowners have been affected by the storm and most have no insurance to cover the damage caused by hurricanes, officials said.

"If this hurricane had crossed central Florida, the funds would have already been spent," said Nicole "Nikki" Fried (D), state commissioner for agriculture. "People are struggling every day – people whose savings, college funds and all their lives are actually on the ground."

Many lingering effects of the hurricane are intangible – stress, anxiety, depression. Normal rain storms trigger excessive panic. People are visibly tired, wrung out.

According to Sharon Michalik, Information Officer for Bay County Schools, 4,800 students, or about 1 in 6, live in temporary homes, which the federal authorities consider homeless. She said that that very morning she received a note from a teacher who had been forced to move seven times since the hurricane and was about to lose her seventh rent.

In Panama, Sabrina Fleming resumes her activities at the Peggy Sue hair salon, which was reduced to a mountain of cinderblocks and wood panels by Michael's winds. But Fleming still suffers from a bad case of fatigue due to disasters. A forest fire erupted near her home last weekend and raged for three days, powered by the felled pines.

"I'm 42, but I'm 82," she says. "Life is just harder now. Everything takes time. It's so exhausting and I just want to run away.

A young mother Stephanie Michelle Powiliatis, of Panama City, out of three, wrote a call to a local group on Facebook: "There are so many levels of destruction that no one could have predicted, and I feel completely out of control these last time. I am constantly frightened, more anxious than before October 10, depressed and worried. If you like, tell me that I am not alone here.

More than 200 neighbors responded. They assured him: You are not alone.

Achenbach reported from Washington.