ZEPHYRHILLS, Fla — Jamie Curtis’ Zephyrhills home is gutted, but he still wanted to recognize Veterans Day.
“Just the right thing to do. I appreciate the sacrifice they made a lot more than what I’m going through,” said Curtis.
Curtis and his family have been through a lot. We were here last month, about two weeks after Hurricane Milton, when their house and several others in the Silver Oaks community were still under water.
Just about everything inside was ruined.
“It was bad. It was sickening. I don’t know if I had a word for it to be honest with you,” Curtis said.
Within the last couple of weeks, the water from the Withlacoochee River finally receded. However, the golf course is still flooded as pumps work to drain it. Curtis wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to live in his house again.
His main concern was the contamination from that flooding.
“I did not want to our family coming back in and a few months later be deathly sick,” Curtis said.
But Josh Thompson, owner of 360 Restoration & Construction, is working to get the Curtis family back into their home.
They have 41 projects going on right now.
“You put it back together and ultimately take out all the materials that can't be dry, the drywall, insulation stuff like that that soaked up the flood mold and mildew and you know cat three bacteria water and you dry out your two by fours and you treat it with antimicrobial and get it back up and running and we'll start putting it back together here in the next couple weeks,” said Thompson.
Jamie says it could cost $200,000 to get his house back as it was.
He hopes insurance and FEMA grants will help pay for it.
But he says going through all this is worthless if bigger issues are not addressed to help prevent future flooding.
“It could have been avoided by the culverts down off Simon Road. Hopefully, it’s done. I don’t want to point fingers, but I do want to point fingers but it’s very unsettling,” said Curtis.
The restoration company says they should be done here in six to eight months.
Back-to-back storm events brought record storm surge, rainfall and winds to the Tampa Bay region. The question some are asking now isn’t where people should rebuild, but where we should let nature regain control.
