INDIAN ROCKS BEACH, Fla. \u2014 The owners of an Indian Rocks Beach home damaged during Hurricanes Helene and Milton recently made the decision to tear it down and start over.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
Homeowners Mary Frances and Chris Gorman say it was a bittersweet decision on how to move forward after the storms
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Before demolition began, the Gormans took one final moment inside the house describing what it was like when Hurricane Helene hit<\/p>\n
It was decided that tearing down and rebuilding the house was a better option than trying to repair it<\/p>\n
Homeowners Mary Frances and Chris Gorman say it was a bittersweet decision on how to move forward after the storms.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard, it\u2019s definitely hard seeing it getting destroyed,” Chris Gorman said of their home of eight years being torn down.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, I\u2019m starting to tear up a little bit,\u201d Mary Frances Gorman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a lot of memories in this house,” Chris said. “And it was a great house \u2014 and it was where we first brought our firstborn home. And we\u2019ve just experienced a lot of great memories here.”<\/p>\n
Before demolition began, the Gormans took one final moment inside their home, and described what it was like when Hurricane Helene hit.<\/p>\n
\u201cPulling your 1-year-old out of her crib when the water is that close to getting in, I mean gives you a different perspective certainly,\u201d said Mary Frances.<\/p>\n
It was that perspective that compelled the couple to move forward the way they are.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s so much damage, from the top to the bottom,\u201d said Chris. \u201cIt definitely makes more sense to start anew.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are currently demolishing this house because it was more economical to raze this house to the ground, or to eliminate it, and build a new house back up at flood-plane level,\u201d said Tommy Whitehead, president and CEO of TOMCO Solutions.<\/p>\n
\u201cBuilding something that is going to be safety-wise where we know it needs to be,\u201d said Mary Frances. \u201cIt\u2019s not a question of if, it\u2019s when the next storm comes, and what it\u2019s going to be. And you want to make sure you do everything possible to withstand it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whitehead said the process of tearing down and rebuilding a home can be challenging.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s been quite a few challenges here,\u201d he said. \u201cNavigating FEMA, navigating SBA loans and lending, navigating permitting and then the homeowners have to do a lot of research because this is a major financial impact to them and their family.”<\/p>\n
Even a year later, families like the Gormans are still feeling the impact of the storms in a variety of ways.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s the pre-storm, and then there\u2019s post-storm, and I want to get beyond and start enjoying and living again, because we just haven\u2019t been,\u201d Mary Frances said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"INDIAN ROCKS BEACH, Fla. \u2014 The owners of an Indian Rocks Beach home damaged during Hurricanes Helene and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[274,28,3125,1802,1187,115,596,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,278],"class_list":{"0":"post-24125","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-app-top-stories","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-hurricane-helene","11":"tag-hurricane-milton","12":"tag-melissa-eichman","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-pinellas-county","15":"tag-st-pete","16":"tag-st-pete-headlines","17":"tag-st-pete-news","18":"tag-st-petersburg","19":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","20":"tag-st-petersburg-news","21":"tag-tampa","22":"tag-top-stories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}