Friends, Family, and Compassionate Supporters --
We’re reaching out during a challenging time as our new home, which we just moved into 7-weeks ago, has experienced devastating flooding from Hurricane Helene. Despite our best efforts with sandbags and flood barriers, the waters overwhelmed our home and has made this a complete and total loss for 95% of things we own.
Rebekah has lived in St. Pete for 35-years, and myself, 10 years, this truly unprecedented disaster and from what we hear, out community has seen nothing close to this in over 40-years.
Luckily, we made the call at the last minute and were able to evacuate to Orlando. We watched from afar on our cameras as flood waters rose between 6pm - 5am on 9/26 - 9/27. At first, it was only a few inches inside the home, but a couple feet in the garage. Then things started floating in the garage, our outdoor fridge and washer/dryer we're floating. Still, inside the home we could only see a few inches and it looked like the doors were holding back the water. Around 11pm, we started look at the cameras every 5 minutes and the water was rising 3-6 inches between checks, that's when we knew it was getting bad. We went to bed around midnight with hope it wouldn't be to terrible.
The next day, and days follwing, it's become evident that there was about 4 Feet of water INSIDE our home.
This is highly corrosive SALT water and highly contaminated Category 3 WASTE water! Everything we own was soaking in that for hours.
Yes, FEMA will come, eventually. Yes, flood insurance will cover some of this, eventually. But we will be very vunerable here in sharing that we drained our savings accounts to buy this house 7-weeks ago. I'm sure you know many people who've done similar things. After all, it was a great investment. Just a bit financially scary for a while, we could deal with that! We can't deal with this.
This will be MONTHS, if not a year. There are a TON of up-front costs that need to be covered and it's scary. Something like this can quickly take someone from - just fine - to ruin overnight, and there are SO many others. If we can use funds to also help some of our neighbors, we plan to do whatever we can.
Please consider donating what you can, or at the very least sharing this with your circles. We appreciate any and all you can do. For those that can't donate, your prayers and thoughts means so so much more than you know.
When more than 2 are gathered in his name, he is there! Our God will make a way, he will part the waters and raise this sea. We are confident in that.
We will continue to update with photos and details to truly understand the extent of this damage.
Thank you for your support and God Bless!
Riviera Bay, Saint Petersburg Florida