brerrabbit
Sixth Generation Native Texan
- Joined
- May 12, 2000
If you look at a map look at a map of Galveston Island or an overhead satilitte view you will see that from the far east end of the island extending westward is a 17 ft high seawall protecting the biggest part of the island, where all the businesses, resturants, and historic areas are located. It runs I think about 15 or 16 miles before it ends. There is a lot more island past the seawall and all of the pictures posted are from that area. The highest point of land on that part of the island is only a couple of feet above sea level. When I was growing up and going down there to fish there was not much in the way of development on that end of the island. Today beach homes stretch all the way to the far end of the island where San Luis pass is located and the toll bridge to Brazoria County and eventually Freeport. Some of these homes are valued over a half a million dollars. I know they are great and wonderful vacation spots but I still seriously question why they build them. Over the years parts of the west end of the island have gotten eroded down to only about 100 ft from the gulf to Galveston Bay. Developers have built up the area by dredging sand in to create more area to build. They are fighting Mother Nature and the one thing that time should have taught us is that in the end she always wins. Hopefully the only thing lost there during the storm was property and no lives. One of the big reasons Galveston allows the construction is for the tax revinue it generates. In Texas we pay property taxes based on the assessed value of the house and land. We pay a little under 3% of the value in taxes each year. We have homested exemption laws that allow us to keep our primary residence from going up in value for tax purposes more than 10% a years, however there is no such exemption available for second homes and vacation homes so their values have skyrocketed in the last 10 years which means Galveston has collected record amounts of taxes. An article in the Houston paper yesterday says that as of the day after the storm half of Galvestons tax base has been destroyed. It's going to make findin the money for the restoration of Galveston that much harder.
we also heard that the cows are going crazy in crystal beach from drinking the salt water. well, we are taking it day by day. it's so hard to deal w/ the insurance company. we have flood , windstorm ,hail and hurricane and they still don't want to pay for anything
if anybody has heard all of this stuff please let me know. i don't know what is true and what is lies. we have chosen to still go on our disney trip in dec,so the kids and get things off their minds for a little while. this will be our first trip to disney world.
Unfortunately I wish I could tell you that it gets easier dealing with the insurance companies but it was not for us.
In 2005 we lived in Covington, Louisiana and I worked in law enforcement. I worked thru Katrina while my family all evacuated. By the grace of God our home only had very minor damage. We had no power for almost a month. I went 3 weeks without seeing my children which was brutal. Lots of lessons learned. We knew so many people who had no flood insurance loose everything to rising water, breeched levees, etc. The entire thing is one of those big defining points in the timeline of life for me. Then this year we lived in Port Arthur, Texas for Ike. Yep. Our neighbors said that they are noticing a pattern with us and suggest we move far away from them. LOL! This time we weren't so lucky with the damage. Our home was brand new, just completed at the end of June. Ike blew a large section of our roof down to plywood and we had subsequent water damage down thru the walls on both stories of our house. Bummer. I still don't complain because with this storm & Katrina I know so many people who lost so much more. We had Farmers Insurance on this one. Because so many of the houses in the new neighborhood weren't yet sold the general contractor came thru with their subs the day after we returned home. We were #2 on the roofer's list. The claims guys kept telling us to just have the roof tarped so their adjustor could take pics. Our roof is so high. From what we knew with our experiences with previous storms we knew if we tarped up and waited it could be months before our roof was fixed. Instead of paying the $800 to tarp up the roof and then also pay for the repair down the road we did what was logical and had the stinkin' roof fixed. The roofers took our camera up on the roof and took dozens of great pics. When the adjustor did make it out a couple weeks later he thanked us because his ladder wouldn't even have reached. Farmers was okay to us. They refused to pay for the replacement of our carpet even tho it was totally soaked. They said they'd pay for new carpet pad but not carpet. They wanted us to get the carpet cleaned. My question is how do you replace the pad without taking up the carpet??? Duh! We fought them and got them to pay for part of the carpet. It took numerous calls from the husband and me and a whole lotta language I wouldn't want my mother hear me use. I think those fellas sittin' in those nice offices up there in Oklahoma need to come down here and get a dose of reality. One of them even asked my hubby why we didn't put a fan on the carpet upstairs if we had a generator??? Obviously he doesn't realize that there are priorities and keeping food cool is pretty important when in survival-mode. LOL! Anywhoo, we ended up doing a large amount of the work ourselves. We had to rip sheetrock, insulation, flooring, etc. out of the front side of the house on both stories. We did our own mold/mildew treating and insulation...paid subs for the sheetrock reinstallation/finishing...paid flooring people to come do the carpet upstairs...did our own base/crown mouldings...and did our own painting. The hardwood floor downstairs still needs to be ripped out and replaced because it's somewhat bubbled by the front entry. It's still in good shape other than the slight flaw. For now it's going to stay how it is. Farmers got us a check within about a month of the storm. I felt like they refused coverage on stuff that was clearly covered in the policy but they'll argue to the death over interpretation. Whatever. In life there are some things ya just gotta let life take care of. I told the key adjustor guy that karma is real and we all get what we give in life. I told him when he found himself in a predicament someday when he was on the receiving end of the royal screwin that he was so blatently and shamelessly putting on us that I hoped he remembered us and understood that he reaps what he sows. In all I'd say that in spite of our 3% deductible, after we paid all the expenses and added back in the insurance check we probably were out maybe $2K. Of course that doesn't include the cost of evacuating (twice) and supplies to survive without power, etc. 
