PALM HARBOR, Fla. — One Palm Harbor family is gutting the first floor of their home, destroyed by flood waters after Hurricane Milton.
Cali Gignac’s childhood home is not in a flood zone or near any large bodies of water, yet more than two feet of water entered her parents' townhome and destroyed everything just a month after her mother died.
“We haven’t had a chance to sort her mementos. We haven’t had a chance to grieve her or anything. And now it’s like... everything is garbage.”
Her mother died from breast cancer one month ago. Her final days were spent in hospice in Gignac’s home in Virginia, where both she and her sister live. The family buried her there and sat shiva for a week.
Her father came home just days before Milton hit. They convinced him to evacuate to Virginia.
“What happened here was never on anybody’s mind whatsoever. It was just an excuse to get him to come back,” she explained.
The most they expected was a power outage.
“And then the next morning, we woke up to this phone [call] in hysterics from my mom’s neighbor and really close friend.”
That neighbor was wading in waist-high water and showed them the water around her mother’s car and inside the window of their family home.
Now, she, her father, sister, and husband are working to remove the moldy walls, but their insurance has not yet helped them.
“And you can see, everybody around us has all their stuff out because we had two feet of water and sewage water. It smells terrible.”
She still doesn’t know the source of the flooding other than water that came from the intersection of County Road 95 and West Lake Road.
The water still had not been pumped out when she flew back with her father a week later.
Now, they are trying to save what they can, sometimes stopping to take a snapshot of notes or photos that they find. But as tears come, they quickly move on, knowing they have so much to do.
“Our photo albums are just, like, melting.”
With no answers on what caused the flood, the family doesn’t know if it will even be safe to rebuild.
“He should just be grieving my mom. And now, instead of thinking about that and figuring out life, he’s figuring out where he is going to live.”
Cali started a GodFundMe page for her father to help with expenses. Click here for more information.
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