Lessons Learned from Hurricane Rebuilding

Last week in Galveston County, we got lucky. Some people say we dodged a bullet, but I think that metaphor is ill-fitted for something as gargantuan as a hurricane. Perhaps we dodged a napalm blast or a MOAB explosion. Perhaps worse. Anybody who’s entered a community directly in the hurricane path says the same thing: it looks like a war zone. Like something out of a movie. So perhaps the more appropriate metaphor is dodging numerous napalms and MOABs.

Unfortunately, the hurricane had to make landfall somewhere, so it is with deep sympathy that I post today ten lessons learned from my experiences rebuilding after Hurricane Ike and Hurricane Harvey. You may find that your lessons and experiences are different than mine. I can only speak for rebuilding the one property.  

Don’t panic. It is easy to feel overwhelmed when your home is damaged/destroyed in a hurricane. I know it’s a cliché to say “take things one step at a time,” but here it holds true. Unless you have large wealth and resources behind you, rebuilding will take time and effort as well as blood, sweat, and tears. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Hurricanes teach resilience. You and your family will recover.Insurance really helps. We got very lucky. I’d dropped my insurance for years. I only put it back on in April, about four to five months before Hurricane Harvey made landfall and threw a couple thousand gallons of water into my first floor. But say you don’t have insurance.Talk to FEMA and seek help. There is lots of assistance out there to help get you at least some of the money you will need to rebuild. I don’t know the particulars for Louisiana, but in Houston there were opportunities to seek assistance from state and Federal programs as well as local charities.Don’t forget your charity assistance. Food Banks, Red Cross, etc. They are there to help, and especially if you don’t have insurance, every dollar counts. Lean into these organizations. They want you to. For example, don’t worry about water. There will be plenty of water everywhere. Every time Houston has been hit with a hurricane, it seems we get inundated with half the world’s bottled water supply, which I find ironic when a tidal surge has swarmed through your town. So many cases of water were available, we started turning it down.Hurricanes bring communities together. Lean on your neighbors. Hurricane response is first and foremost neighborhoods and communities responding and helping each other out. For Hurricane Rita, we evacuated to my parents home in the tiny town of Hemphill. We were young and didn’t know better. The eye of the hurricane went over the house. The next day, we were one of the families moving downed trees from the middle of the dirt roads so that the community could access the local state road. Even with disaster areas declared, which should improve Federal and state response time, the initial response is from neighbors. After Harvey, people with big hearts did my family huge favors by delivering to us home cooked meals. Those meals meant the world to us because we lost our kitchen and our stove. So cooked food (as opposed to microwaved meals) was rare. But people came in to help with that, and I will be forever grateful.Don’t trust contractors, and don’t be afraid to challenge them. Look, some contractors really are there to help out the community and rebuild. After Ike, we had two great contractors, one a fly-by-night that had me worried we were getting scammed on roof repair (but the roof is still up ten years later), and the other a local man with a local business who did exceptional work. Harvey was a different story. We hired a different contractor who came highly recommended. But they were horrible. We were fighting with them to get them to finish the work they promised to do, and their initial two-week schedule took them almost two months to complete. In the end, they dropped the price 10 percent because they’d done so poorly. I remember the supervisor came out personally to meet with me and review all the problems. She fought every problem, cussing and swearing and not happy with us because we’d called them on some of their misses. Where they could, they tried to add cost. Where they could, they tried to cut corners. They were ticked that I was catching them on it. My point is, don’t be afraid to tell them to do the work they signed up to do. At the end of the project, they were happy as punch and trying to sell me on the kitchen counter work.
The kitchen contractor may have been worse. I remember her throwing a fit like a two-year old after we’d fought them again to do the work they set up to do. She all but was stamping her feet and crying out that I was trying to take advantage of old people. I had to calm her down and we eventually worked it out. This was just a tactic to try to get her way. The lesson learned is that contractors will try to make you uncomfortable if it will give them leeway on schedule or increase their profit.Be patient and don’t give up. Rebuilding is a marathon, not a sprint. We needed about 8 to 9 months to fully recover from Harvey. I think Ike was 4 to 6 months. At times it will seem endless. For me, it helped to break the rebuild down into projects. The interior drywall was repaired first. Second was the kitchen. Third was the bathroom.The way to save money is to do it yourself. Hurricanes develop our self-reliance. The good news is that a lot of this stuff is online, specifically on YouTube. It is up to you how comfortable you feel making the repairs and how much time you need. I’ve known several engineers who wouldn’t dare let anyone else do the work for them. They saved a ton of money doing it themselves, and they loved every minute of coming home and rebuilding their house. I don’t have that same knowledge base or drive, but I remember after Ike I replaced the entire fence line. With Harvey I did some of the painting and caulking. Not much, but every little cent counts. Along these lines, remember safety first. Watch where you nail, mind your fingers when you saw. Don’t overexert because that’s when accidents happen.You don’t have to wait for the adjuster to get there to begin working on your house, but document everything. Take plenty of photos.Be kind and help each other out. It is difficult to assist others when you are the one needing the help, but remember the kindness that you receive, and when you are in a better place, return the favor. Maybe it is somebody else who needs help like a meal or a bit of extra money. Maybe it is a homeless person you see on the side of the road who you could give your donuts to. I don’t know. Hurricanes teach humility. Remember the humility you learn coming out of this. (You may have always been a humble person, but there is a whole other level of humility learned when a bunch of volunteers show up to help demo your walls.)

There you go. Ten tips to help in recovery. Remember to hydrate and try to stay positive. Both times my house has been damaged by a hurricane, good things have come out of it. Hurricanes can’t drown the human spirit. It isn’t easy to see when you’re at the beginning of the rebuild, but you’ll carry these experiences the rest of your life. I will keep you and yours in my prayers.