Hurricane Michael. A Small Gulf Coast Town Destroyed.

This post has nothing to do with painting or art. This post is about a little weather event called Hurricane Michael.

If you’ve been checking this site or a search of some kind brought you to my website, you probably noticed some inactivity. No I didn’t give up because no one views this site (I’m working on that). Nope.

Hurricane Michael Makes Landfall

On October 10th, 2018 Hurricane Michael, a Category 5 hurricane, slammed into Panama City, Florida, my current home. It made landfall with 160 mph winds sustained. It came ashore on Tyndall AFB and leveled it. The destruction it caused on the base and the town was devastating. I’ve never seen anything like it. I am not talented enough as a writer to describe the devastation that I saw when I returned to the area. I’m talking about trees splitting mobile homes in half, roofs completely ripped off, collapsed homes, telephone poles and trees snapped like toothpicks. Railroad cars were flipped off the tracks. There was literal twisted metal hanging from trees and wrapped around power poles. It was truly heart wrenching.

Home Damage

Hurricane Michael damaged my home substantially. I lost an entire section of my roof. The wind got up under the eaves and ripped it away and taking a few sheets of plywood along with it. This allowed rain to pour into the ceiling and flood the half of the bottom floor of the house. My living room, kitchen, and dining room had to be gutted and the flooring ripped up. I was very fortunate in that I didn’t lose a lot of personal possessions. It was mostly furniture that was damaged. A tall tree in my front yard fell over and barely missed falling on the house. A branch merely grazed it on the way down.

How painting helped my mental health.

Strengthening Storm

Hurricane Michael got strong real fast! It was forecast to land as a Category 3. My home is not in a an evacuation zone so we were going to stay and ride it out. The day before landfall it just kept getting stronger and stronger with every update. I started to get a bad feeling. The night before I decided to leave. We packed a suitcase, gathered the dog and cats, and the wife and I hopped into the car and drove to Macon, Georgia. I backed out of the driveway wondering if I would ever see my house the same way again. I didn’t.

Since that night, I haven’t been able to live in my home that’s barely a year old. It is not easy getting working through the insurance process or making repairs in a county that was severely damaged by a major hurricane. I won’t bore you with the details but going through something like this takes extreme patience and mental resiliency. I am thankful that I got out, I have insurance, and that I have been able to live in temporary homes. But I just wish I could snap my fingers to make things the way the were on October 9th.

Poor Panama City and Mexico Beach

This is just a small part of my personal story. Many people got it much worse. You should definitely read more about Hurricane Michael. We didn’t get a lot of national attention due to the constant election coverage and then the California wild fires happened. We were quickly forgotten about. Progress is being made each day but each day driving through the town to work or to visit the house is depressing and takes a toll on you. The place still looks like a warzone. Yesterday marked exactly 3 months since Michael made landfall yet there’s so much work that needs to be done.

Edit: Making some minor updates exactly 5 years later. Read about Hurricane Michael aftermath.

If you would like to help out in any way, email me. I will make sure your donation gets to the people that truly need it and not to some major charity that will take a bunch off the top.

Thank you for reading. Now please enjoy some more happy paintings.