Gents: Had we moved to Denver as originally planned, we would not be having this conversation. That said, I'm on the north side of the island of (Orange Beach, AL ) one lot in off of the main body of water which is Wolf Bay. Before I built, the city redefined my lot as a "Zone of Moderate Wave Action". I laughed. Turns out, they were right. Many of the houses facing Wolf bay had the sand washed out from under their slabs and the slabs failed. I could have built higher but then it becomes a study on how high to go. Had I gone 36" higher, I may have been ok but I would have spent a bunch more money and could have repurchased my lost contents several times over. The smart thing to do is have NO stuff below the house. That's what the feds expect and why nothing is covered. We gambled that a storm would not hit us before we got everything sorted. We lost. Had it been next year, most of my stuff would have been higher in the garage and the 100 boxes of my wife's stuff would have not been down there.
Orge: I'm with you, rebuilding a life is expensive and time consuming. Takes away from projects. Didn't plan on rebuilding my life and, if I can work it out, won't do it again. I'll give this life a few years then move on. My 82 year old neighbor has done this 4 times.
On a lighter note, we now have two more kayaks Kayaks are on display for the rightful owner to reclaim but will reside here if nobody claims them. One of those high dollar ice chests floated up stocked full of cold beer. I saved the work bench my dad handcrafted out of misc. odd pieces of wood back in the 1950's. Had to wait on the drawers to dry so I could extract them. Garage doors are back in place.
