Nerd Pride Radio

We were evacuated from our house this morning at 6 am. By 11 am my house took on at least three feet of water. Here’s my house:



But here’s the thing: WE’RE INSURED!

And everyone’s safe. We’re staying with friends and have our dogs. No one was hurt. It’s just stuff.

But as I told my daughter- the cool part is that we’ll be talking about this for the rest of our lives.

Didja play Texas Flood while y'all was getting outta there?

Good to hear you are ok man.

Consoles and holiday 2018 games first!

Wow. Good deal getting out, better deal being insured.

Glad you're all ok. Good for you to keep a positive attitude about those things you can't change.

OMG!!! I'm glad you all got out safely! Are you going to try to go back to the house after it is fixed up in some way or are you going to try to move? I'm glad for the insurance but oh, what a mountain of work. Is there anything we can do from afar to help?

Man that is hard to look away from and hard to imagine it being your own home. I hope you're all okay. Saw the posts online.

Please let us know if there is anything the Pride can do for you.

Thanks Ron. I don’t want to sound crass, but we need money. The thing about flood insurance is that it doesn’t provide a housing allowance. Nationally, all flood policies are like this. So even though my house is unlivable, I still have to pay the mortgage and also pay rent to stay in another house. If my house had burned down, my homeowners policy would pay for my living accommodations, but flood insurance doesn’t do that. Also, FEMA hasn’t declared this a national disaster (and maybe never will because the total damage to all houses isn’t high enough), so a lot of the disaster relief programs won’t help us. The Red Cross told us that the town ten minutes away from us was hit harder than us, so they’re going to focus their assistance efforts on them and not my town. It’s been pretty frustrating.

Also, we found out yesterday that the city is probably going to require us to tear down our home and rebuild it elevated, which would cost over twice what the house is worth. If we can’t afford to rebuild it, we have to have it demolished. Compounding the problem is that flood insurance (we were fully insured) will only pay for the damage done, so even if we have to demolish the house, insurance will still only pay us for 60% of the value of the house (or whatever the final damage claim is adjusted to). Thus, even though we’re fully insured, it might be that we have to demolish the house, and the insurance payout will still leave us owing thousands of dollars to the mortgage company.

And while that all seems terrible- and it is- we’re keeping it all in perspective and trying to see the humor and joy in all of that. I’m not saying it’s cool being homeless, but it’s making for a pretty good story that we will have fun telling for the rest of our lives.

How much elevation does the city think would have helped here?