How Four Families Handled Natural Disasters

Natural disasters in the 12 months that ended in mid-January represented the costliest stretch of extreme weather in the U.S. in 90 years, according to AccuWeather.

In a span of less than four months, three major weather events hit both sides of the country.

Hurricane Helene, which made landfall on September 26, 2024, was the deadliest hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland since Hurricane Katrina, causing $78.7 billion in damage, primarily in Florida, Georgia and the mountains of North Carolina — far from the usual path hurricanes take.

Hurricane Milton reached land two weeks later, causing $34.3 billion in damage, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

And three months after that, wildfires spread through the Los Angeles area, causing as much as $131 billion in losses, according to a forecast from UCLA Anderson.

Here, four families whose homes were severely damaged or destroyed by those disasters share their experiences, including the decisions they made as fires or storms approached, how they handled their insurance claims, and their advice to help others prepare for disasters.

Devastated by wildfires

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Rob Seltzer, a certified public accountant in Los Angeles, started the day on January 7, 2025, by getting a haircut and driving to his office. Wildfires had been growing in the distance, and at 11:30 a.m., his wife, Linda, called to let him know their son’s middle school had closed because of the wind. Rob immediately drove home to meet his family and discovered that the fire was heading toward their neighborhood of Sunset Mesa, near the border of Palisades and Malibu.

“We had maybe 10 to 15 minutes to grab stuff and get out of there,” he says. “My wife grabbed clothes for all of us, some jewelry and a few other things, but not a lot. I grabbed my two guitars, my camera, my laptop and a few client files. I had my dad’s watch and grandfather’s watches, three bottles of Dom Perignon and a bottle of 1942 Don Julio [tequila].”

The Seltzers could see the fire over the ridge from their home, a 2,000-square-foot ranch house built in 1971. The house was special because of its location. “We’d look out at the ocean and see Catalina every day. On the front side, you could look at the Santa Monica Mountains,” Rob says. “We’ve seen fires from our house before, so I wasn’t panicked. I thought we’d be back the next day.”

They had three cars and two drivers, so Rob evacuated in the old Jeep he’s owned since he was 20 years old — he’s now 62 — and Linda took the SUV. They left their Tesla at the house and drove away to stay with friends.

Rob and his neighbors tried to monitor their homes from their Ring security cameras. A few hours later, the neighbor who lived to the Seltzers’ right called to say the hedge between their driveways was on fire. Then the neighbor on the other side said the fence between their houses was on fire. The Seltzers’ Ring camera went out at 4 p.m. They weren’t allowed back in the neighborhood, but Rob figured that his house must have been destroyed.

The next morning, they learned that only one house remained standing among the 42 homes on their street. Rob called his insurance company that morning. His broker called back within 15 minutes, and an adjuster called within 1-½ hours. The insurer advanced the family $10,000 to pay for temporary housing and food.

The Seltzers stayed with friends for the first few days and went to a pop-up disaster center in Los Angeles, where representatives from government agencies and dozens of insurance companies helped fire victims start to get their lives back in order. The family replaced their passports, Social Security cards, marriage license, and birth certificates.

Ten days after the fire, they were finally allowed back into the neighborhood. Outfitted in hazmat suits, the Seltzers and their neighbors dug through the rubble with firefighters. They found little pieces of their lives. Some handmade silver that Rob’s mom had received as a wedding gift in the 1950s had all melted together. Their 13-year-old son, Mario, who is a second-degree black belt in karate, found some of his karate weapons, which had been tarnished from the fire. Linda saw her coffee mug, “but there was stuff melted on it.”

More than 5,000 homes in their area were destroyed, and finding a place to live was difficult and expensive, especially because they wanted to stay near Malibu Middle School for Mario. They were one of 60 candidates for the first apartment they applied for. With help from a friend who owns a property management company, they ended up renting a two-bedroom condo.

Navigating the insurance claim
For loss-of-use coverage (also known as coverage for additional living expenses), which helps pay for rent or a hotel while you’re out of your home, the insurance company gave the Seltzers four months of rent up front. It will continue to pay until they reach the $75,000 limit, which will likely happen long before they’ll be able to move back home. “It’ll probably be three or more years,” Rob says.

The Seltzers also received an initial check for their personal property coverage within a few weeks. They used the money to start buying new clothes and replacing items they lost. But the check amount is lower than their coverage limits, and they’ll need to provide documentation of the contents that were destroyed to get the additional payout.

Getting paid for the dwelling coverage — which covers the costs of rebuilding the house — took longer. Typically, for those who have a mortgage, the insurer writes the check to both the homeowner and the lender, and the lender releases the funds to the homeowner in installments as repairs progress. The Seltzers’ insurance company sent a check in February, but they didn’t get any of the money from their mortgage lender until mid April. “After multiple calls on a weekly basis to my lender, we finally received the amount of our insurance payment, less the amount we owed on our mortgage,” Rob says.

Rob believes the insurer should pay them more, however, because they had renovations completed on their kitchen and backyard, making the home more expensive to rebuild. So he’s challenging the adjuster’s valuation of their home. “I think that we will prevail. I have ledger printouts of every dime we spent and pictures of the remodel.” If that doesn’t work, he’ll ask a contractor he knows to provide detailed rebuilding cost estimates to give to the insurer.

“I can’t emphasize it enough: Be your own advocate, and don’t take no for an answer,” he says.

Damaged by floodwaters

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Ryan Ford and his family were monitoring the path of Hurricane Helene on September 26, 2024, from their home in St. Petersburg, Fla. “We were very nervous because anytime a hurricane is out in the Gulf, we’re concerned about flooding in our area,” says Ryan, who lives in the Snell Isle neighborhood. The storm seemed to pass by their home at about 6 p.m. and stall out. “Nothing was really happening,” he says.

But the water arrived a few hours later. “Around 9 p.m., I started to notice water slowly creeping up the streets and up our driveway,” he says. “Around 9:45 p.m., it was at the top edge of our driveway. About 45 minutes later, that water was in our house.”

At first, the Fords tried to keep the water out, but it continued to rise over the next two hours, reaching a depth of about 3 feet outside the house and about 10 to 12 inches inside. “It reached a point where we kind of gave up trying to keep it out,” he says.

Ryan, his wife, Martha, their 16-year-old daughter, and their cat and dog huddled on a bed for several hours, trying to stay safe as the water continued to rise until about 4 a.m. Then, as low tide arrived, “we opened up the doors to our house, and the water rushed out,” he says. “Everybody stepped up with a broom or something trying to get water out.”

They continued to clean up the next day. “We started piling stuff up and throwing it away. It’s really like a blur,” Ryan says. “There was nothing to indicate that this hurricane was going on, other than the fact there was water in our house from the storm surge.” It was the first time water had come in their one-story house in the 15 years they had lived there.

Water damage was in every room, and they had to cut out up to 4 feet of drywall from the bottom of all of their walls. They wasted no time in contacting their insurance companies. “While we were in the bedroom with the water around us, we put in claims,” Ryan says.

Their homeowners insurance provider quickly determined that the damage was caused by flooding and denied the claim (homeowners insurance doesn’t cover flood damage). Fortunately, the Fords also had flood insurance, which they had purchased from a private company so they could have higher coverage limits than the National Flood Insurance Program offers (only up to $250,000 for dwelling and $100,000 for possessions).

The insurer sent out an adjuster within about a week, who determined the rebuilding cost. But getting coverage for their damaged furniture and other possessions was more complicated. They had to document the name of each damaged item and the room it was in. They also had to provide receipts or estimates of current replacement costs based on the retail prices of similar items they looked up online, as well as photographs of the items.

Their private flood policy had coverage for additional living expenses, which the NFIP doesn’t include, and the $10,000 they received helped pay for a rental house until they moved back into their home in February.

Contractors were hard to come by after the storm, but the Fords happened to be in the middle of a home renovation; their contractor had nearly finished adding a room on to the back of their house when the storm hit. He quickly shifted his focus to fixing the rest of the home.

They tapped their emergency fund to start rebuilding while waiting for the insurance money, which was fortunate because the claims process was lengthy, Ryan says. They received the claim payment in February and felt the amount was fair. But their private flood insurer canceled their coverage when their policy term ended in May, and now their only option is the NFIP. “No other private insurer was willing to come back into this area,” Ryan says.

Crushed by a tree

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Brandi Gabbard’s home in the Barcley Estates neighborhood of St. Petersburg made it through Hurricane Helene without any damage. But two weeks later, on October 8, she and her husband evacuated as Hurricane Milton advanced, and a very large, old tree fell, crushing about one-third of their house. All three bedrooms and a bathroom were destroyed. “The City of St. Petersburg had about 18 inches of rain in the storm,” says Brandi, who is managing broker for Sun Coast Realty Solutions and a city council member representing the far northeast part of St. Petersburg.

The Gabbards returned home after the bridges to Pinellas County were reopened on October 10, and they took pictures of the damage and filed their insurance claim online. They also had plenty of pictures on hand of their home from before the storm. “When you live in Florida, you get very used to photographing your home. We took updated photos before we evacuated for Helene,” she says.

While waiting for the insurance company to process her claim, Brandi called around to get tree-removal quotes, which ranged from $8,000 to $30,000. She and her husband chose the lowest-cost option, had the tree removed, and put tarps on the crushed parts of their home to try to prevent further damage. They also visited an insurance village in a local recreation center, where representatives from many insurance companies were available to assist homeowners. They checked the status of the claim, made sure the insurer had everything it needed, and found out when the field adjuster was planning to inspect the damage. “Right then and there, they were able to give us a little bit of money to pay for some of our out-of-pocket expenses,” Brandi says. Because the home was damaged by the falling tree and rain that fell inside, rather than rising floodwaters, the homeowners policy provided coverage.

About two weeks after the adjuster’s visit, the Gabbards received his report with the payout estimate, which was close to estimates they’d been receiving from contractors, minus the deductible. “It was a bit of sticker shock, the reality of actually seeing the deductible in front of you in a time when you’re faced with tens of thousands of dollars of repairs,” says Brandi.

In Florida, windstorm deductibles on a homeowners insurance policy typically range from 2% to 5% of the dwelling coverage. The higher the deductible, the lower the premiums. But that means if you have a $1 million policy, for example, you’ll have to pay $20,000 to $50,000 out of your pocket before the insurance kicks in.

Finding a contractor was difficult after back-to-back hurricanes, but Brandi and her husband managed to secure permits and hire subcontractors, and they did as much of the work as they could themselves. By mid April, the repairs were about 80% finished.

Brandi recommends reviewing your insurance every few years to make sure you have enough coverage, no matter where you live. “It’s so important that people understand the risk that is associated with our climate changing,” she says. “Every place is vulnerable.”

Crumpled by a mudslide

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Marilyn and Jonathan Clark both grew up in North Carolina and moved to Florida after college, settling in Santa Rosa Beach, near Panama City Beach. But they always wanted to buy property in North Carolina. “It was our dream to get a place in the mountains,” says Marilyn. In 2022, they bought a cabin in Fairview, N.C., about 10 miles away from Asheville, and fully renovated it in 2023. “It was an incredible property by a creek on the side of a mountain,” she says. They had been renting it out through Airbnb and visiting occasionally, and their goal was to eventually retire there.

The Clarks were at their home in Florida when Hurricane Helene was headed toward them. They evacuated to Alabama, says Marilyn, who loaded the kids and cats into their Airstream trailer. Meanwhile, their Airbnb guests had checked out of the North Carolina home on Wednesday, September 25, and the next guests weren’t due until Sunday.

The Clarks were relieved that their Florida home made it through the storm, but a neighbor in North Carolina called at about 9 a.m. on Friday and told them that the chimney from their cabin was in the creek. “The second story crashed into the first story, and the roof split in half when the chimney fell into the creek. The cement foundation moved 20 feet, and the whole house shifted. I never imagined anything like that. The landslide, mudslide and the amount of water — it’s still incomprehensible.”

The Clarks contacted their homeowners insurance company, but it took several tries for the adjuster to get to their property because the bridge over the creek to their home was washed out. Thanks to their experience living in Florida, the Clarks were ready to give the insurance company a detailed inventory and records of their renovation. But it didn’t help. Because they didn’t have flood, landslide or mudslide insurance, their claim was denied, she says.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency sent them $500 for food, but because the damage was to their second home rather than their primary home, the Clarks don’t qualify for most assistance programs. They submitted detailed paperwork for a North Carolina mitigation grant — a program that buys damaged properties, demolishes them and preserves the land as green space — and are waiting for the decision. “It was like writing a thesis,” Clark says. “If we get the mitigation grant, it will cover the house for the price it was the day before the storm. That was our dream house and where we wanted to retire,” she says.

The Clarks are hoping to deduct some of the losses on their tax return, and their records of the home improvements and inventory should help.

Note: This item first appeared in Kiplinger Personal Finance Magazine, a monthly, trustworthy source of advice and guidance. Subscribe to help you make more money and keep more of the money you make here.

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