Hurricane Michael, the Rebuilding Continues with Al Cathey

August 15, 2023

Episode 96 Hurricane Michael, the Rebuilding Continues with Al Cathey

Picture the quaint beach town of Mexico Beach, Florida, now forever changed by the devastating impact of 2018’s Category 5 Hurricane Michael. With former mayor, Al Cathy, we navigate through the harrowing aftermath and the resilience of the community in the face of utter destruction. Al’s personal insights reveal the Herculean task of rebuilding, and the emotional toll a disaster like this has on a community. 

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Transcript

George Siegal: 0:00

Thank you for joining me on this week's Tell Us How to Make It Better Podcast. In my documentary film, the Last House Standing, we featured a house in Mexico Beach, Florida that survived Hurricane Michael in 2018. And while we were there, we interviewed the mayor, Al Cathy. If you watch the film, you'll see his comments at the time about what they were experiencing in the aftermath of a Category 5 hurricane that wiped out a good part of Mexico Beach. His job of being mayor of a charming little beach town turned into having to be part of a massive cleanup and rebuilding program, so I decided to reach out to Mayor Cathy to see how he's doing today and how the rebuilding is coming along. He was recently defeated in the mayor's race this spring, as the town decided to go in a different direction, but I think you'll find it very interesting to hear all that he and the town have gone through in their effort to rebuild and try to get back to a normal life.

George Siegal: 0:55

I'm George Siegel and this is the Tell Us How to Make It Better Podcast. Your home is probably your biggest investment, and every week, we show you warning signs and solutions to help you protect it. Tell Us How to Make It Better is partnering with the Readiness Lab, the home for podcasts, webinars and training in the field of emergency and disaster services. Al, thank you so much for joining me today.

Al Cathey: 1:19

Glad to do it.

George Siegal: 1:20

Now, first off, sorry about the election and how that didn't work out good and bad. I mean, you went through a lot as mayor. How do you feel after all that?

Al Cathey: 1:31

I'm good with it. It's sort of a After 16 years. I have nothing to back up from. I'm good with it. I have my people here. After the storm we got a new. We got new people in town and maybe they wanted a little change or wanted. But as far as what I've done and been a part of some great teams of people to put our city back together, I'm very proud.

George Siegal: 1:59

Now for people that are watching the podcast as opposed to listening, I'm putting in some of the drone footage that we shot after Michael. It really was unbelievable If you weren't actually there. The video doesn't even do it justice. Describe to people what it was like immediately following the hurricane when you walked outside in your town.

Al Cathey: 2:21

You know, a Floridian in Mexico Beach, as long as I've been, hurricanes are sort of a you learn to cope with them, you learn to deal with them. Michael was certainly a different storm and what it did to our city is very, very difficult even to put into words. We were the. You know, we were the Bulls eye for a category five 19 feet of storm surge, 160 mile an hour wind, old Florida town, old block, on great slab, on great houses, and it just simply, it just simply took.

George Siegal: 3:01

85% of every structure Was either inhabitable or destroy it now, what I always find is Amazing when you see people that get elected for an office or they're in an office and then something happens that you never in a million years would have expected to have to deal with and all of a sudden You're the mayor of a catastrophe and having to face what was going on there. What was that like for you? Did you ever wake up and go? God, I want to get the heck out of here. This is nothing I want to part of.

Al Cathey: 3:35

Yeah, that was a tough part for me. It's a business owner. We lost our business, both of my sons lost their homes. Our town was laying literally in in a pile and I'm the mayor and the day before I was dealing with Potholes in the road and maybe the trash didn't get picked up.

Al Cathey: 3:59

And all of a sudden now you wake up to the reality of that your city is in dire need of of a lot of, of a lot of leadership, and it was a difficult thing for a couple of days for me to get my my hands around that I could say our business was laying down, our sons homes were laying down, our city was laying down. There's a lot to a lot to To deal with when you aren't equipped, never had any, no idea what FEMA disaster recovery was like, never dealt with anything like that. So it took me a few days to come to grips with how to assemble our city, how to assemble our business, how to assembly our family, and I think in the end we proved that that resiliency and heart and stamina It'll take you a long way, you know it's pretty easy to be an armchair quarterback after a disaster and say you could have done this, you could have done that.

George Siegal: 5:10

My contention is that most people don't really, first of all, think that it's going to happen to them, especially Floridians. I'm not a lifelong Floridian I wish I was. I moved here in 2017 and I love Florida, but there's an attitude here that people think it's just gonna miss us or, if it does, it won't be as bad as what we've seen from Michael and now from Ian and we saw from Irma. I mean, where those things hit, there's major damage. Do you think you guys were just totally unprepared, just not thinking it would ever be that bad?

Al Cathey: 5:42

No, no, we were not Unprepared. We were as prepared as A small town that had always skirted major storms could be the old Florida style of Mexico Beach. Simply, we weren't built to To withstand something like Michael. The only good thing, if you can, if you can somehow categorize that as good, is that the people we don't. We had four fatalities, which to me, there was a like a hundred and twenty five people that stayed in town. It's just a. It's almost a miracle to me that and I don't want to in any way underscore the four fatalities but that we didn't have more is remarkable.

Al Cathey: 6:41

Our, our structures here Simply weren't. There was hardly any new that the new structures that were here survived, but we just weren't built for a Michael which there was just no way. Our, our whole coastline, our whole city coastline took the effect of a hurricane you know, a category five storm and we're not very deep and our three and a half miles of coastline, the structures on those, just what you I call it. You draw the short straw in Florida sometimes that happens to you, but the strength of these storms now, george, is different. I mean this isn't a. I mean we're talking about a very, very tightly wound Storm that Mexico Beach was ground zero, just, we just didn't have a chance. We didn't have a chance. Yeah, no, that was that. That was obvious by by seeing it in person.

George Siegal: 7:44

A couple of times when I was up there, and when I talk about preparation, what I mean when I say unprepared, I don't mean unprepared from the sense of you know how you would handle it afterwards, but just it. What's amazing to me is that people don't seem to be as concerned about how their house would survive A major disaster, you know. Do people evacuate? Did they have the right insurance? What are some of the things you find out after the fact of of how the residents had to go about putting their lives back together? Did you think they were prepared themselves, not as a community, but as individuals?

Al Cathey: 8:26

Now, if you look at, if you look at at us and and I've talked to several down in the Fort Myers area that dealt with Ian or still dealing with the People, they did not have a chance to do that. People they do become complicit, complacent, as Floridians, because you and Mexico Beach just as a Live example for me we didn't leave, our family did not leave Be ach, we stayed in our home. Now that comes from years of oh, it'll go somewhere else, it'll miss us, it'll, it'll almost get here, but it won't. So you do become complacent and then, by the grace of God, you have what we experienced in Michael and you survive it. You think, wow, maybe, maybe I need to rethink this next time.

Al Cathey: 9:27

But during those, during the buildup of the storm, I mean, we had close to 200 or 300 people that said they were going to stay, even though we had mandatory evacuation. Now, by the time the storm hit, that number had dwindled because during the night on Tuesday night it it greatly Intensified and took more of a direct. You could, you could see the line that it was taking. But, yes, the being unprepared is more of a mental thing. I mean, you can put plywood on your windows and you can tape your doors and you can, you know, get your, your outdoor trash cans and take care of your property, but you can't prepare For 160 mile an hour and 19 foot of storm surge. Can't do that.

George Siegal: 10:21

I wish there was a statistic that people could could pull on when we talk about what, What is your cost of a hurricane? What is your cost of damage? Because it's much more than just the physical structure of your house and your immediate Life being uprooted. For some people they never recover from it. It could be five, ten years, it could be forever, until you get life back to normal. So the cost is really it's almost impossible to calculate, isn't it?

Al Cathey: 10:47

Oh, yeah, the footing and our demographics we were. We were a large percentage of military attire ease People's who, who were settled in their life and and a and a redo, a start over, is Difficult for the, for that type of person. Oh, and that's what happened here. A lot of our, a lot of our 65 Plus year old people. Just they wanted to start over, but not they wanted to be closer to family, they didn't want to go through the hassle, the insurance hassles, the rebuild hassles. So they they. Unfortunately, we lost some very, very good people that had been long term Mexico Beach people, not that we don't have some good ones coming in, but it's just it's sort of been a little change in our demographics and COVID can also contribute into that.

George Siegal: 11:54

Sure, that's like getting a double or triple whammy when you're having a bad time now. Now, movies don't really do disasters justice. Well, actually it's a huge injustice, because you see the disaster in a film and then at the end they're all optimistic like life, life is gonna go back to normal, everybody's gonna be good. It's not that way, is it?

Al Cathey: 12:13

No, it's, the adjustment period for some is more traumatic than others. For, for for our family as a, I mean, we've been here, lived here, raised here like a living here. We knew, we knew where our roots were and we were gonna. We were gonna overcome Michael. But for many others, the length of time that it takes To especially if you have to deal with the darn insurance people that it's in Mexico Beach, we, some people, are still dealing with insurance claims. The disaster part, the FEMA part, it sounds great initially. It sounds these people are gonna come in here and take care of you and you're gonna get this, you're gonna get that. Well, it doesn't. It doesn't work that way. It's. It sounds good, but the process of getting disaster relief is Extremely, extremely stressful. So for some they throw their hands up. They either walk away or they just take what they can get and move, you know, to a non-coastal area. But it's certainly not. The picture isn't always the process, I should say it's not always as bright and pretty as what you see, especially soon after the storm.

George Siegal: 13:50

Yeah, just the cleanup alone. You were talking about the budget. The amount you had to spend on cleanup so far exceeded what for years of budget. I don't think you ever would have had a budget that high to clean up.

Al Cathey: 14:02

I know we were close to 50 when our annual budget was running $3.5 million, or just our debris cleanup was $50 million.

George Siegal: 14:17

So that's yeah, that's crazy. That's hard to imagine. Now, when, during the process, when you go to rebuild, what I found was amazing Okay, you got hit by a category five Hurricane, but the building code didn't change to withstand another Category five hurricane. Do you think the building code was made tough enough in the wake of such a big disaster?

Al Cathey: 14:40

Yeah, we went to 140 mile an hour wind code here and and that was a really a Just a slight change from where we were at 130. The biggest change for Mexico Beach was our elevation, our flood elevation. Most everything now on the south side of 98 is all on piling and of course that changes what we look like when you're used to seeing driving through town and you see all these slab on great houses, and now everything is elevated. So I Think I think now we are a category five comes to Mexico Beach. What we've done in the last five years. You would see Minimal damage because we're practically brand new Under under new codes, under new elevation requirements, everything. Now I don't think you would that you would see piles of debris From homes literally being washed away. I don't, I don't think you'd see that.

George Siegal: 15:58

Sure, what I'm more talking about is you know the building codes in South Florida. You know, down in Miami and Broward County, that area, the toughest that there are, though I think the wind rating there is 70 miles an hour. I mean, why not? Just is it just unaffordable to go that high?

Al Cathey: 16:14

Yeah yeah, it makes. Yeah, the Miami is the toughest that I am aware of in the in the country not just Florida, but anywhere fair. So we talk to the FEMA people and you have to remember to get FEMA assistance you have to make some adjustments to what you put back. They aren't going to pay for the same disaster again if you don't do anything different. So we were in dealing with them and looking at our flood maps, looking at how we were going to what our code requirement was going to be for elevations. We felt like and they felt like, that was reasonable. If you get what Miami has, you start literally pricing people out of their home, their ability, because they weren't insured. A lot of people just simply are underinsured. They couldn't put it back, they couldn't come close to putting back what they had. If you were to elevate the building code to say what they call now the Miami-Dade building code, this wouldn't, it would not be practical for Mexico Beach to have done that.

George Siegal: 17:39

Well, I've heard some our experts argue then maybe you shouldn't build there. I mean, you know it's such a scary thing right now in Florida. We have trouble in Tampa, a lot of people not able to get homeowners insurance and I imagine after you've been hit by such a disaster, a lot of insurance companies leave, they don't want to touch it. So our people that are rebuilding to 140 miles an hour they're still. Are they taking a risk, in your opinion, or is it just? Hey, that's now, it's just, it is what it is. We live in Florida, but somebody's got to pay for that risk.

Al Cathey: 18:10

Well, the insurance industry in Florida is, I mean, it's just well documented. It's hard to find property insurance. Citizens is the state carrier and a lot of people, including ourselves, myself, we would prefer not to deal with citizens the insurance companies are making. I mean the few that are left, and if you have to deal with the state insurance carrier, which is citizens, you really I mean the options are pretty slim and it's difficult, very, very difficult to for moderate income families that have a have a want to live in a coastal area to be what I call properly insured. It's difficult to do.

George Siegal: 19:06

It's tough. I've read some articles that say the areas that are most risky should bear the greatest cost of the risk, because it's not fair for somebody who lives inland to have to pay more because somebody else wants to live by the beach. That's I mean, I don't know. I wrestle with this kind of stuff all the time just because how much ridiculous money I'm throwing away every month on homeowners insurance. What are your thoughts about the people who are in the riskiest areas pay more money.

Al Cathey: 19:33

I guess that's an argument if you, if you don't live on the coast and you think that your insurance is being influenced by those and the price of your insurance is being influenced by those who live on the coast and you're helping supplement someone, I can that's a valid argument if you want to have it. But I don't know that the insurance companies, I think they have to pool their money and hope for the best. I don't know how else to do it in Florida.

George Siegal: 20:04

It's a crazy industry, and especially if you think about their goal is not to pay you, right? If they can find a reason not to pay your claim, they're not going to pay it.

Al Cathey: 20:15

Yeah, it's been my dealings with interest. Now, not me personally in terms of my business, but for so many of my buddies and friends in Mexico Beach and many of our citizens. Some of them has just simply been a nightmare. Dealing with the flood and the wind the wind sort of the chicken in the egg. The wind doesn't want to pay because that was flood damage. The flood doesn't want to pay because they claim that was wind damage and the poor customer or the homeowner sitting in the middle trying to decide how to navigate this insurance nightmare and it's just really difficult and very, very stressful to do.

George Siegal: 21:03

I can't even imagine what you guys were living through. And then this past year, when you see what happened with Hurricane Ian, most people in Florida have been down at one point or another to Sanibel or Captiva Island and they know how spectacular that area was and hopefully will be again sometime soon. What were your thoughts when you saw that happening?

Al Cathey: 21:26

I was heartbroken for them. You never. What I saw the morning after Michael is something that no mayor, no citizen, no homeowner, no one wants to see their life in a pile of rubble from a disaster. Unfortunately, it's happening way too often, or more than we're used to. And when the Ian thing happened for Fort Myers and Sanibel and I just sat down and you can't help let memories of what we hear went through.

Al Cathey: 22:08

So I don't know, that city, I think, or that area of Florida, was also one of those that had skirted disaster for years. So they weren't prepared in terms of the type of structures that they had there. You could tell just from the TV pictures. And I don't know how those people will. I mean some of those especially large, large number of mobile home parks, old Florida home, some of those. I don't know how those families will recover financially to stay there. I don't know that they'll be able to do that like us. I mean we lost people that just that no longer could afford to have a quote beach house or a home along the Gulf of Mexico and they're much more populated than us and I sort of my heart breaks for them. I don't know how they're going to do that.

George Siegal: 23:18

And when you see reports of what, how assessments after the hurricane since then and the newer structures, as you mentioned, in Mexico Beach or around your area, newer things held up a lot better than older structures. So when you look at Florida as a whole, is there a thought maybe we have to go in and, you know, find subsidies or whatever so people can beef up their homes in a way that this doesn't keep happening, because you can't just wait for an area to get wiped out and start over, do you? You just keep hoping that it doesn't happen to you.

Al Cathey: 23:50

Yeah, I don't think there's a, I don't think there's a program that say you go in and do preventative maintenance in terms of beefing up a structure.

Al Cathey: 24:03

I don't know how you would do that. I think, as Mexico Beach and the Fort Myers Sanibel Island, I think that you, you have to think, well, we paid that price and we won't. You know we'll do better when we rebuild and we'll be better prepared. But I don't know how you would take a community, a coastal community, and do any type of preventative hurricane measures. And you have to remember, if you're, there's a significant difference in in dealing with a hurricane a category two and a category five. So when you, when you say you have to hope for the best you have, I think, I think for those of us living here, you have to hope for the ones in the twos and the threes, because you can, you can overcome those the fives you're going to. I think, as, as they say, if you're going to dance, you're going to have to pay the fiddler, and I think that's what happens with a five you, you have to pay.

George Siegal: 25:19

As Professor Joseph Barbera said in in my film the Last House, standing he goes. Hope is not a strategy and there's certainly there's certainly a risk with with that mentality. When you look at Ian, we thought for sure in Tampa we were going to get just pummeled by it and if Ian had hit here it would have wiped out a huge part of this area. So now, as you're watching this hurricane season, the water is so warm in the Gulf and around Florida and they just predicted that they, because it's an El Nino year. Experts were saying there's a 30% chance of excessive storms. Now they raised it to 60. Are you fearful for how the rest of this hurricane season is going to go?

Al Cathey: 26:04

Oh, yeah, yeah, I've been. I was asked multiple times in the 12 months after Michael about global warming and and and you know I'm not a scientist, here's what I know. I know that we are seeing stronger, more powerful storms than we've ever seen. Something is happening here in our, in our global world and with the warm water at an all time high, I'm talking about never, never, seen water temperatures and that's the fuel for hurricanes. So it's certainly it's something we all have to pay attention to, and I think it for us in Mexico Beach, our antennas, during this time of year. We stay more in tune now than we used to.

George Siegal: 27:04

Do people forget? I mean, I know when you have the kind of damage you do. I know the blow-bys and the ones like when Irma skirted Tampa. We had first moved here and people just went few and moved on. But when it actually hits you and destroys your community, like Michael did, does that feeling get numbed after a while, or are you reminded of it every day when you drive around?

Al Cathey: 27:26

Well, let me put it this way five years it hasn't removed any of my feelings about storms. I feel different today about being more in tune with what's going on in the Gulf of Mexico from a storms perspective. I don't want to get caught With that, like we talked about earlier, just that complacency. Well it's, you know, as Florida is a hurricane season, well, it changes your life. Now the power of these storms is not what we were used to seeing. There's been very few of them, even I mean even Katrina back in the 80s, I mean in the 70s. And so it's For me and for Mexico Beach. I guarantee you people here when they start hearing or Seeing things on the TV about a disturbance in the Gulf, we're all, we're all on board where our antennas are up, we're paying attention.

George Siegal: 28:36

I can imagine. Now give me a glimpse behind the curtain, because we're making another film About building and structures and building code. So when you guys are having those meetings talking about rebuilding, is the construction industry lobbying to keep the standards down? Or do you think they were on board in your community saying, no, let's, let's make it tough?

Al Cathey: 28:56

No, they were. We were trying to be practical. Usually after any type of Event, like a Michael, if you aren't careful, the pendulum will swing One way or the other too far. And and we, we sat here and tried to be the most practical way to prevent the most Damage that we are, the least damage that we can and still allow people to come back and be part of wonderful Mexico Beach. So that's what we did and we did that with FEMA graces.

Al Cathey: 29:36

Now, we that, they, they, they were involved in our process of, like the elevation, they were involved in the restructuring of the flood maps. So, again, practical horse sense, so to speak, of what you can do with what you have. It's not a matter of the state going to buy all the land on the coast. That's not going to happen. We're gonna. We're gonna have to deal with hurricanes and Better building codes are gonna make a big difference. But in Mexico Beach, our building codes, we, we were pleased and I guess we won't know how well we did until we have another, you know, until they're tested. But we think we're much, much better prepared.

George Siegal: 30:30

Yeah, hopefully you won't get tested for quite some time. But my question is more the construction industry, builders themselves that they have a lobbying group that tries to fight standards being made tougher and I was wondering if they tried to exert that kind of influence, saying now we should lower the standard.

Al Cathey: 30:48

We didn't have. We did not have any one here, any group here, that came to to our city to To try to Sway us from a building perspective one way or the other.

George Siegal: 31:06

Okay, well, that's good to hear. So what advice would you have for Anyone who lives in a coastal town, whether it's Florida, along the Gulf Coast anywhere Alabama, mississippi, texas? What would you tell them that they really need to have on their mind as we head into the peak of hurricane season?

Al Cathey: 31:27

Well, I said it before, I think what I've done, you sort of become more in tune with what's going on in the gut and you don't need to panic. But you need to know that you've got a place to go or be prepared to leave and don't let your pride I mean there's nothing to be gained by saying I wrote out a huge storm. I mean that ego thing is long past. I mean you just have to see what has happened, to see that if you stay, you have to know you're in a good place or the best place, and be more prepared mentally to gather the things so that you have time to something that you wouldn't want to lose, that you wouldn't want to, and that's going to be determined by the type of structure you're living in or where you would go. But more importantly and I do it I pay more attention to the weather people now. I pay more attention to the squiggly lines that we all are used to seeing, and I don't pay for granted that they're going to be wrong. Let me put it that way.

George Siegal: 32:54

I agree with you. I'm somewhat fearful. Just today that there was supposed to be very little chance of rain here in Tampa and all of a sudden I heard it pouring outside my house and then the forecast said it's just going to be for a few minutes, and then a half hour later it was pouring again. It's like well, if we're not getting this right, how are we going to know that that storm is going to be predicted accurately?

Al Cathey: 33:13

Well, I think the weather people you know, prior to there was a little sensationalism that went with reporting the weather. You'd see people out in the blowing stormy rain holding their hat and saying, hey, you know, we're here in Mexico Beach and the weather's turning. I think now they're more interested in getting in, giving the information and being. The sensationalism I think needs to go away and they need to just simply tell us I mean, we've got supposedly equipment and data that can, but a storm is so unpredictable. I think there, I mean on Mother Nature, you just it'll fool you. And Michael, michael could have been 50 miles one way or the other in Mexico Beach would have been fine, but it you know short straws and you got to have heart and stamina to live in Florida. Now you're going to have to hang in there.

George Siegal: 34:20

Well, you certainly did. What's ahead for you now that that you're not mayor anymore?

Al Cathey: 34:25

Oh, I'm enjoying our businesses built back. We got up a new. You know we're a family business and I'm hoping that our town will see more. We're sort of slow on our businesses coming back, but the town there's just a good feeling about Mexico Beach in terms of recovery and for me personally, I've got four grandkids and I'm enjoying seeing them more.

George Siegal: 34:54

Excellent. Well, I appreciate you jumping on with me, Al I. I just can't even imagine what it's been like there. I mean because I left there shocked and I was only there for a handful of days, but you guys have really gone through a lot.

Al Cathey: 35:08

You haven't seen us in a while, have you?

George Siegal: 35:10

I have not. I had a friend that came up there. He went there a few summers ago and said it was, it looked really good. These were great. I want to get back up there because it's such a great area.

Al Cathey: 35:19

It's amazing. It's amazing the recovery that we have, that our town has gone through and of course we're continuing where it's not in any but. But we look fresh, we look like a happy town, we look like a good, strong, stable Mexico Beach, you don't see I mean sure those of us around that remember remember. But in terms of riding through our city now you can't help but think something with ash will wow, is there a storm here? So that's a good sign, that's a great sign.

George Siegal: 35:54

That is a great sign. Let's hope. Let's hope for an easy end to hurricane season too. But it looks scary, doesn't it?

Al Cathey: 36:00

It does, it really does. Good talking to you.

George Siegal: 36:03

Thanks, al. Thank you for joining me today. My documentary film, the Last House Standing, featured Al right after Hurricane Michael hit Mexico Beach and it shows people what happens when we build houses in risky areas. As my way of saying thanks for listening today, there's a link in the show notes so you can watch the film the Last House Standing for free. I hope you'll take advantage of it because there is important information in the film that will hopefully motivate you to do something to make your home safer. And if you have a story, good or bad, from home building or remodeling or being in a disaster, there's a link in the show notes to reach out to me and tell me about it. Who knows, you might wind up as a guest on an upcoming show. Thanks again for listening. See you next time.