Hurricane Dorian’s Last Stand!

 It has been nearly three years since Hurricane Dorian devistated the island and flooded our house.  Everything looks back to normal here but there are still invisible lingering results.  We had just put on new storm doors before the storm, and they seemed not to be damaged. But, two years later they began to swell and finally the internal salt water damage came to light.  This past month another invisible result made its way to the surface.

We were just finishing our second Storytelling Week with a cookout at our house on Saturday night.  People were departing when, all of a sudden, the front porch of the house collapsed!  Standing on the porch I at first thought I was fainting and then that there was an earthquake as the floor dropped beneath my feet.  Luckily no one was hurt.

When our construction worker, Armando, got things torn apart, he discovered that salty flood water had invisibly forced its way into the structure and remained trapped there softening and rotting the wood and rusting away at the nails.

Everything had to be torn out and replaced.  Once Armando and Woody finished the repair, they had done it so well that it will never do this again.  The porch may now be the strongest part of the house!

This showed us once again how very insidious hurricane damage is.  It goes beyond the surface and lasts long after things look repaired.  We hope that we do not have do deal with such a storm again.

All fixed!  Ready for me to paint.