PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — It’s that point of 12 months when Heather Wendt’s household house in Crystal Seashore often turns merry and brilliant.
“For us, it’s at all times been an enormous factor,” she mentioned. “My regular is that I seem like a Hallmark film in my home.”
However this 12 months, it’s a horror film, too, after Hurricane Helene.
Three months after the house flooded, it’s nonetheless gutted and ready for restore.
The truth is, Wendt nonetheless doesn’t know if she will restore it. And to make issues value, Pinellas County has now labeled the house “considerably broken” in a letter Wendt obtained weeks in the past.
“I referred to as my husband, and I mentioned, ‘We obtained the substantial injury letter,’” Wendt mentioned. “My husband mentioned that it was an important factor, however I advised him it was not one.”
The letter from Pinellas County mentioned her Crystal Seashore house is so broken that to adjust to FEMA’s so-called 50% Rule, she both has to raise it, demolish it, or relocate it.
Wendt confirmed up at a Pinellas County Board of County Fee assembly Tuesday to share her frustration — and she or he wasn’t alone.
“They’re screwing individuals’s lives up,” one other Crystal Seashore house owner, John Richter, mentioned of the letters.
They’re mad that the letters despatched out provided few specifics or explanations as to why their properties had been deemed considerably broken.
Householders are additionally mad that inspectors didn’t enter their properties earlier than figuring out they had been considerably broken. In response to the county, inspectors measured the high-water line on the surface of properties and entered it right into a FEMA calculator to find out whether or not a house was considerably broken.
Within the Tuesday assembly, the county acknowledged the determinations should not a precise science, and Wendt believes her state of affairs is proof.
She mentioned despite the fact that 4 toes of water surrounded the outside of her house throughout Helene, solely a few foot of flood water entered her house.
“We’re appalled that this is happening and that we now have to undergo this,” Wendt advised the commissioners.
Kevin McAndrew, the county’s constructing and growth overview companies director, mentioned greater than a thousand Pinellas County properties in complete are on-track to get substantial injury letters within the coming weeks, however that quantity will go down.
Pinellas County
Householders can enchantment the determinations and, extra instantly, request reassessments.
The reassessments will study properties to be considerably broken in a extra granular vogue. Householders might be allowed to submit images and documentation, and a building price estimator, property appraiser, and licensed floodplain supervisor will overview the knowledge to find out if the substantial injury willpower ought to be overturned.
Pinellas County
“When you get an preliminary willpower of considerable injury, pursue the reassessment,” McAndrew urged.
Wendt is beginning that course of.
“We’ll combat it as a lot as we are able to,” she mentioned.
Nevertheless, there’s no assure she’ll win that combat and be allowed to rebuild.
“You undergo the motions of what do I do subsequent?” she mentioned. “I don’t even know the place to go along with this. I can’t sit right here and simply demolish this home simply because the county mentioned that.”
To study extra about Pinellas County’s reassessment and enchantment course of, click on right here.
