Hurricane Ian and my parents home

 My parents have been in a nice retirement community for a few years now and this isn't the first hurricane but it is the only one that did significant damage to their home.  Total loss..  

Both my parents and my family are blessed though - no one was hurt and God takes care of the needs. 

I'm very happy we have enough space for them to move in and store many of their belongings while they work through the insurance and wait for a new home.  It is estimated as a good number of months before it will be ready.  It is hard to say if there will be other delays - there are so many people needing replacements now.

It was much different seeing their pictures compared to us being their when I took these. These are after a couple weeks so the roads were clear of debris and the water had receded from the roads we use to get there.

These are from a golf cart on our way to their house in the community.

The devastation was hard to comprehend at this scale.  Tornadoes tear up homes but that is usually in a path you can follow and it may skip areas a bit.  This was just destruction everywhere.  Not every home was a total loss but many were and most others had damage to some extent. 

This is what we found when we got to my parents home.

These next 2 pictures are of what used to be part of the lanai. Roof and most walls gone.  A refrigerator was tossed out in the yard. 

Something like 2/3 of the roof was gone - it was now "brighter inside" but mosquitoes were starting to multiply and lack of electric or any chance of usable air conditioning makes cleanup even harder. I can't say that the smell of wet insulation improves with time. There was some humor though as a few containers in awkward places were full of water - my wife can attest to that!  I was fortunate to not drop the container of fishing weights and water - but I did tell my parents that it made up for them helping me move many heavy books between homes over the years! I probably am off a bit on that - I'm sure they still moved more books than I moved wet fishing stuff.

It is in God's hands and nothing else matters.

Romans 15:13

13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

  Jeremiah 10:12-13

12 But God made the earth by his power; he founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding.

13 When he thunders, the waters in the heavens roar; he makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth. He sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses.

Psalms 71:18

18 Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, my God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your mighty acts to all who are to come.