Saying goodbye

When Hurricane Ian came around, Smith was caught off-guard by what transpired Her home did not experience a flood surge but the wind blew her roof off, damaged her deck and part of the frame of the home Ian took a bite out of a strip of the ceiling in the front

One of the keys to her decision to demolish the home was the uncertainty of whether she could build back on the ground floor Her mother had begun work on a living space below the ground level, which was never completed. She estimated the cost to replace the roof at about $30,000 and the damage to the deck at $ 3 0 , 0 0 0 W i t h F E M A ’ s 5 0 - 5 0 r u l e requiring the home to be built up to a higher elevation if more than 50% of the value of the home needed to be repaired, Smith made the tough call to demolish

“I needed to be smart I’m 62 years old I worked very hard I don’t want to work forever,” Smith said Her property is located in a commercial district of town “My lot is worth more than my dwelling,” she said “I’m not a distressed seller Who knows what is going to happen?”

It was tough for Smith to say goodbye to her family’s cottage “It was almost 100 years old and in about three hours (after demolition began) it was already getting loaded into a Dumpster,” Smith said Smith still believes in Fort Myers Beach She owns another cottage on the i s l a n d , o n e o f t h e f e w t o s u r v i v e Hurricane Ian. “It weathered it better,” Smith said Despite damage to the exterior, the pool and fence, Smith said she was “pretty much able to put it back together ”

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