Nicole & Seth: Ian Devastated Our Home

My name is Nicole and my boyfriend Seth is a veteran, single dad, and a federal employee. Our home in North Fort Myers, FL was devastated by Hurricane Ian.

Seth bought the house just last year. It’s now uninhabitable and most of our personal property was damaged by flood water. It will be a long time before we can live there again. While we do have structural coverage, we did not have personal loss coverage for floods. 

Friends and family have been asking where they can send disaster relief funds to help, so we thought a GoFundMe would be easiest.

We’re both so grateful for all the love and support we’ve received already.

Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts. We couldn’t do this without you.

Nicole + Seth

Here are the details of our story:

Eight inches of river water flooded into our home during Hurricane Ian, which resulted in the rapid growth of mold over the following days.

Despite our speedy attempts to remove water and carpets from the house, ServPro said they have to gut 4-6 ft of drywall around the entire interior of our house and garage - from just 8 inches of water! We’re shocked. This means we’re losing the kitchen, 2 bathrooms, and the wall between our garage and master bedroom closet.

We thought we could salvage the furniture, but by the time we had somewhere to move it and the means to get it there, we discovered it was already riddled with mold. Our personal losses went up a lot that day.

We still don’t know the full extent of our losses, how long we’ll be displaced, or how much rebuild costs will be. We don’t know how much or when we’ll receive insurance money or FEMA assistance.

Insurance hasn’t sent our emergency “loss of use” check yet, despite being led to believe we’d have it already. We received $700 from FEMA for emergency supplies for 3 people. All of our savings went to start mold remediation, so stress about finances is setting in.

We’re grateful to have a roof over our heads thanks to short-term housing provided by a partnership between Global Empowerment Mission and AirBnB. We have 3 more weeks to figure out long-term temporary housing while we begin to rebuild our home.

Since we don’t want to ask for more than we need, we’ll be adjusting the fundraiser goal as we discover costs and insurance payouts.

We would like to thank everyone who has supported us during this challenging time. We’re humbled and very grateful for you all.