It was April 2023.
What started as a normal, rainy South Florida day, eventually turned into anything but ordinary for Wanda Molina in Fort Lauderdale.
“Everything is floating around,” she is heard saying in a cellphone video she took that day, capturing water inside her home on SW 32nd Street.
It was a sight she said she had never seen before at her home of over 35 years.
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“This area usually floods but it doesn’t flood that bad that water comes inside the house,” she said.
Just down the street, a similar scene was unfolding that day inside the home of Ana Maria Delgado.
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“My son was trying to help with towels around, under the doors,” she said. “He felt tired and he said ‘I can’t’ and so he left and the water came in.”
As the water seeped into the home, decades of treasured memories were washed away.
“We used to have a piano,” Ana Maria said. “My son was 6 when we bought a piano but we had to throw it away and furniture.”
Ana Maria, who is on a fixed income, said they did not have flood insurance.
“FEMA helped us with some money for our house,” she said.
But she credited her family for stepping in when they needed it most.
“My family helped us a lot,” she said. “And we have some money in our saving account, so we used it and now we finished.”
The street where both Ana Maria and Wanda live falls under a Special Flood Hazard Area on FEMA’s flood maps. Homeowners, who have a federally-backed mortgage on this street, are required to buy flood insurance. But many people like Ana Maria, who have already paid off their homes, often decide to skip on that protection.
“Because we never had a problem,” Ana Maria explained. “And it’s expensive to pay. We are retired and it’s not easy.”
According to FEMA, the National Flood Insurance Program has over 180,000 policies in Broward County, with over 38,000 in Fort Lauderdale alone. The NFIP paid over $236 million for thousands of claims filed in the county related to last year’s historic flood. More than half of that money was paid out to claims filed in Fort Lauderdale. The average claim payout in the city was $80,172.
“My gut tells me, you know what, I think I’m going to get flood insurance this year,” Wanda said. “Thank God I did.”
Wanda said she paid about $1,000 for her flood insurance policy. The money she received after filing a claim made a significant difference in her ability to rebuild.
“I used that flood insurance to do the floors, the walls and my cabinets,” she said.
But her policy did not include coverage for contents, so she had to take on over $20,000 in debt to buy furniture and major appliances that were damaged in the flood, she said.
“I had no debt and now I have debt,” Wanda said.
The expense forced her out of retirement and back to work.
“It’s just devastating,” Wanda said, getting emotional as she spoke. “This is devastating. It’s horrible.”
For Ana Maria, the impact of the flood went well beyond the material things her family lost in the water.
“My husband started feeling bad,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “He died last December. His heart was bad and with the problem he [became] depressed.”
She said the stress of dealing with the damage became too much for him.
Still, Ana Maria finds a way to smile through the trauma and heartbreak, relying on the strength she finds in her faith.
“We try to be positive because if you are positive you try to continue your life and try to fix it,” she said.
Ana Maria said she plans to now find a way to carry flood insurance, even if she is not required to do so. Wanda plans to keep her coverage in place.
The City of Fort Lauderdale said FEMA recently revised its flood maps and is expanding the special flood hazard area by 15%.
If you’d like to see if your home now falls under a special flood hazard area in Broward County, click here.
To learn more about the recent changes, click here.
