Shay: First we are going to touch on some things that happened before the hurricane. When did you first think that Hurricane Andrew might hit Miami?

Shaffer: That it might? Well I knew as soon as they said that it was going to be a hurricane that there was always a chance that it might hit. I guessed that it was going to hit near Miami about two or three days before. That it was going to be close to Miami? Probably I guessed that it was going to hit near Miami about two or three days before. I was positive after it crossed the Bahamas, which was the day before, and I knew we were in trouble.

Shay: Were you here in Miami at the time?

Shaffer: Yes.

Shay: What preparations did you make?

Shaffer: Well, ah, I mowed the lawn. No, we actually spent… We had a neighbor who actually was kind of savvy about hurricanes, and the year before kept telling us that we were due for a big one. So, when he trimmed his trees, I went out and trimmed mine, about three weeks before the hurricane started becoming a hurricane. And we then, we cleaned up. The day before, that would be Sunday, we got up and thought, “We are in trouble.” I think that when it crossed the Bahamas it was clocked at 120 mph, and judging from my old Mexican science attaché days, I figured we were in for a lot of trouble. So the first thing I did was go out and try to find plywood, which was a disaster. We finally located some that was not as thick, or as strong as I had wanted. When you’re desperate, what can you do. It was at the sixth or seventh Home Depot store that I found. I finally found it and it cost a mint.

Shay: Prices were already outrageous.

Shaffer: There were no bargain deals at this time. I ended up nailing those with uncut nails, from a neighbor of ours. There were no uncut nails to be found. So we ended up doing the north and east ends of the house, it’s all we had wood for, because I knew it would be coming from the east and from the north. It only protected the east because the north kind of blew away. As it turned out the western and southern walls really weren’t damaged. So, it worked out by accident. We closed all the windows, we locked all the windows, we put the curtains across the windows. We flattened down the shades. We took everything off the walls. I was afraid that if the wind did come in, it was going to blow everything off the walls. So we very carefully took all these things down, and tucked them away inside dresser drawers, inside closets, inside cedar chests, inside anything, anything that we could fit. We took everything off countertops, off tabletops, anything that was light we took off the floor. We took all the pool things inside the garage or inside the house. We moved furniture around, towards the wall so that it wouldn’t blow away. We discovered that while preparations were really nice, when water penetrates, it really doesn’t matter. In certain respects, it really didn’t matter, but it made us feel better. We actually saved some things we probably wouldn’t have. We decided it was silly. We knew that there was a good chance that we were going to get a big hurricane. We were talking the Friday before. We were talking in my office, and we knew it was going to hit somewhere in South Florida. On Saturday, it was getting closer. On Saturday night, we went out. We had a wonderful dinner. We didn’t talk about any incoming hurricanes or anything. We had a nice time, didn’t worry about anything at all.

Shay: Where were you during the hurricane?

Shaffer: We decided to…well this is…We were actually in Clearwater. The reason being, Laurie and I have done a lot of things, dangerous things, in our life together. Now we have three kids, and we decided it was OK to do dangerous things in our life, by ourselves, but not with the kids. And since my brother lives in Clearwater, we decided, well we’ll go up there and spend the night. And then come back, the next day, after the storm has just dumped a bunch of water and then gone. We weren’t thinking in terms of destroyed homes. We were hearing horror stories on Sunday, about how clogged certain highways were, and certain exit ways were. People were saying, “Don’t get on the road because you’ll join all these people.” I watched the news, Brian Norcross, and it looked like it was going to hit straight on the house. I decided it was worth the risk, jumping in the car and going across as fast as possible, and getting out of here. I figured with about twelve hours to spare, we could probably get out. We packed, actually I should say, Laurie packed the car, with food and extra clothes, and our important papers. That’s something you learn when you travel around the world. You take the papers with you wherever you go. We forgot the pictures though, so we lost a lot of family pictures. We traveled to Clearwater, it only took us seven hours, though.

Shay: What is the drive normally?

Shaffer: It’s normally4 1/2. The worst of the traffic was just getting to75, getting across. There were a lot of people trying to rescue their boats, and their trailers, and everything that they could haul out with them. We tried to make what time we could. It turned out really nice, we got there late at night, we left about 3:00. I think it was about 4 or so, but we got there at just about 11, and put the kids to sleep. And then my brother and I sat up and watched the news. We didn’t think it was going to be as bad as it was.

Shay: What were your thoughts during the hurricane?

Shaffer: Actually we were very worried, because we knew by now that it was going to hit the house very badly. From the pictures we could see, we knew it was going to hit somewhere between Coral Reef Drive and Homestead, and we figured that was us. That was long before…we’re talking six or seven hours. People were saying, “Well it might veer north; it might veer south; it might go down. It might become stationary.” I didn’t believe it. It was going in such a straight line, the entire trajectory. It was quick paced, a straight line. So we figured we were going to have to do something. My brother offered to put up the kids, ourselves as well, for the duration. It’s amazing. We called my parents to make sure they weren’t worried. We called Laurie’s parents. We called everybody that we knew. Before we left, I had forgotten that. Before we left, on Sunday, I went around to everybody I worked with, they were going to be out in some safe place, because I was worried. We have some who were close to retirement, and some younger people who don’t have family down here. We kind of wanted to make sure that they were OK. We spent part of the day Sunday calling around to make sure that everything was taken care of. With the exception of my boss who was out of town, and decided that because there was a hurricane, he better fly back, and got here on like the last flight, the flight before the hurricane, and got back just in time to be told, “You’ve got to leave your house.” Anyway, he was the only unaccounted for person.

Shay: So you were the one in charge?

Shaffer: I made sure everybody was OK, and told everybody where I was going to be. We didn’t talk about that. I called to make sure that everybody was OK. I called to make sure that they were really OK. One of the people in my office has a home right down near Homestead. And it turned out their house did not have much damage at all. It broke a few windows, garage door. It was very fortunate. The people around her were terribly damaged. We were very worried about her because her husband has emphysema and he didn’t want to go anywhere. She and her husband stayed in her house. We were really worried about the house, about insurance. Did we have enough insurance? How much of this stuff is going to be destroyed? Are these things going to be blown out? Where are we going to live? And we started worrying. Laurie got a brilliant idea, actually an inspiration. We called just before midnight, called the insurance company on the 800 number, registering claims. And she said, “I’d like to register a claim. Our house is being effected by Hurricane Andrew. And even though it hasn’t hit yet, we’d like to be the first to register a claim.” And they said, “there’s technically no damage that occurred yet, so you can’t file a claim.” So she said, “No, you have to understand. It is going to hit our house. And at 6:00 tomorrow morning it is going to be walking through our bedroom. We want to register a claim now, so that you realize this is going to happen. It’s going to happen. So you’ll send some people down there.” And the guy said, “OK, well we’ll go ahead and register the claim, and we’ll go ahead and put you on in.” And she talked at length with this person, and went over all the ins and outs of the policy. It turned out that when USAA came, we were claim #1.

Shay: Oh, that’s perfect. Tell me, what did you do the morning after?

Shaffer: This is the morning of the hurricane, Monday morning. I was awakened about 5 or so in the morning. My brother and I watched the news and it looked really bad. They were showing shots around Coral Gables and central Miami which was not the center of the storm. They were saying, “Well, it doesn’t look too bad.” And I was saying “No, it’s…I was positive it was far worse. Whether it was fortunate or unfortunate, I’d been through a lot of natural disasters, most recently the earthquake in Mexico City. I know that when you get somebody out and show them one thing, it’s not so bad here, but it could be terrible someplace else, especially when they’re not near the epicenter of whatever disaster. So we, my brother and I, decided we would come down. And then it took us another three hours to talk Laurie out of coming down. We were afraid there might be looters and all kinds of chaos, and that it would not be a great place to be. And at first, Laurie wanted the kids to come with us. Said no, let’s not bring the kids till we find out what’s happening. Then we talked Laurie out of coming down, said don’t worry, we’ll call you right away. Great. Assuming telephones are working, we didn’t quite think of it that way. So, my brother and I jumped in his convertible and drove down. We drove down with a case of beer, stocked up the car on Sunday, rather on Monday morning. We went out and bought propane stove, propane gas, lantern, battery powered lights, canned food coming out the ears, mostly Dinty Moore Beef Stew, no spam. My brother and I drew the line: spam or sardines we won’t eat, we’ll do Krations, but we will not do that. Oh, lots of fresh fruit, not fruit but fruit in a can, canned fruit, and crackers coming out the ears. And loaves of bread and a lot of luncheon meats in a cooler. And we put all this stuff together, and while we’re arguing with Laurie about whether she’s coming with us. Then we put it all in the back seat of this convertible and roared off to…Oh, Gatorade, we had tons and tons of Gatorade…and we roared off to Miami, with no traffic. We didn’t hit traffic until we pulled off the turnpike and 152nd St.

Shay: Could you get through there? That was right out by Country Walk.

Shaffer: It was right out by Country Walk and nobody was out. It wasn’t until we started going from the Turnpike over to Route 1 that it was starting to get heavy traffic. Of course that was because of fallen trees.

Shay: It was possible to get through though; the roads were clear.

Shaffer: We got there sometime between 4 and 5 in the afternoon of the hurricane.

Shay: What was it like returning to the house?

Shaffer: (long pause) I…We…I have to say, there were two perceptions. My brother was not expecting… My older brother was not in the earthquake in Mexico City. He had been in the earthquake in Caracas with us, we lost some friends there. The destruction. He had forgotten how destructive nature can be, so he wasn’t expecting it to be as bad. He thought it was going to be like the 80 mph winds they get in Tampa once in a while. That’s how bad it would be. Right, four foot waves. So, he was really shocked. He just couldn’t believe there were concrete electrical girders, bent over and/or broken. He just stared at them. Lines down all over the place, trees destroyed, houses just blown away. 152nd Street is just infamous now for the destruction. We drove down the street, we had to weave in and out of people’s yards as we tried to get toward our house. The streets were so blocked with power lines and with trees that you couldn’t…you literally had to drive up on people’s lawns to drive around. Fortunately, I recognized a lot of the houses, not the landmarks that go along with it. Obviously there were no signs up. I recognized the houses enough that I got through to our own street. After we crossed Route 1 and got to 82nd Avenue, we’re still on 152nd Street that’s where we dropped off traffic. Nobody was there. South of 152nd Street, nobody was there, until we got to the house. Which involved having to cut a path through a few trees.

Shay: You brought a chain saw.

Shaffer: We brought a machete, trying to get some of these branches out of the way. We finally got through and around. When we got to the house, and there were three people poking around our house. I tell you, I like to think at first that they weren’t doing anything, but there was no explanation. We kind of pulled the car out to the side and said, “Can we help you?” And he said…the one person who was almost going into the house as we came up, suddenly jolted and rushed over to the car, and one other person who was over to the side, and one that was over at the front came over and said, “Well we’re just looking for a piece of plywood to put over this so we could drive by.” There was plywood everywhere, right next to the car. They could have just moved it over, put it down. Since all the windows had blown out, this one side, and the doors had blown open, they were getting ready to go in and see what was available. They didn’t put up a fuss, they didn’t do anything, they just jumped in their car, and very quickly out of there. Then we started doing the inspection. We walked around first on the outside to see if there were any more people. Trying to see if there was any electricity, so we wouldn’t get electrocuted. We went inside the house, see if there was any water. Naturally, we saw all the destruction on the east side of the house. Trees all over the place, half of them inside the swimming pool.

Shay: For the record, how did the house do?

Shaffer: Structurally, wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. When we went back later, we found out that when they built the house, we’re talking about 1963, it was built by the electrical contractor of most of the homes in the area. So, it was very well built, the basic structure and the strength of the roof, the strength of the walls, obviously. It was very well built. The problem was that he had two flat roofed wings that jutted out from either side toward the back and around the pool that he had done with what appears to be nonpermitted flat roof, because they can’t find any records of a permit being issued. They have permits for the main roof, but not for those two sections. It says to be done later, so there were no permits issued for that. There was definitely not a permit issued for the patio roof. If you’ll remember was huge, like 50 feet across and twenty some feet in width. And that entire roof, it turns out, was not anchored down, even though it was solid wood. It was not anchored down; it was resting atop a huge Ibeam. The weight of it was keeping it down through all these years... with the hurricane.

Shay: So you lost the patio roof.

Shaffer: Lost the patio roof, portions of the flat roofs. When the patio roof left, it took a portion of the wellconstructed roof. And, that was our downfall. Besides that, a tree, one of those big, tall Norfolk trees that was probably about 60 feet tall, fell on the living room roof. It made a hole through which water came through. It wasn’t as though it was that bad, it just made a hole so that the water got in and filled up the entire living room ceiling. Then we walked around on the inside, and that’s when we found the real damage. The wind had blown away the sliding glass doors, blown one of the sliding glass doors through the family room and out the front window.

Shay:I didn’t realize that. I remember the pile, but I didn’t realize what it came from.

Shaffer: Most of that we think was caused by that big destruction was caused by the tile that was from the roofs behind us, because we had a 3 foot pile of tile in the family room. Tile in every room practically, literally every room in the house had tile that had been blown in sometime, that had come through.

Shay: The barrel tile.

Shaffer: It had come through and blasted away. Most of it was from the house that had just been finished behind us, just before the storm. We checked the tiles afterwards, and we found out they hadn’t even been glued, we couldn’t find glue on the tile. We were getting these huge chunks of tile with no glue, and nothing to hold it down. So, they were just lying…when they built the roof they obviously just put the tiles right on top of each other, and the weight would hold that down. They had to rebuild it because it wasn’t built to code. This is stuff that, well, you discover later. At the time, Mike and I were the only ones in our neighborhood, my brother’s Mike. We’re the only ones there. We started walking around, and looking, and seeing if anybody else was there. We looked, and we found Adell across the street. She is an elementary school teacher, widowed, whose house was fairly badly damaged. But she had stayed.

Shay: She was alone?

Shaffer: She stayed with her daughter who’s a late teenager. But they had stayed through the whole storm cause they had no place else to go. And she was going to be darned if she was going to leave her house to be destroyed. She told us stories about holding her plate glass window so that it wouldn’t break. [Laughter] Which, I thought, was near suicidal. So…Because…As it was, she saved it.

Shay: Oh my goodness, you wonder what people think at times like that.

Shaffer: She was very proud of that. She’s been admirable, really, though the whole thing.

Shay: I wonder what she thinks now of that.

Shaffer: I don’t think she would do it again. She now looks back on it and she thinks, that was something wonderful to do once, but…

Shay: Let’s go on to the 50/50. I understand you had over 50% damage.

Shaffer: Yes.

Shay: Number one, how did you find out about, the 50/50 rule?

Shaffer: As it applied to us, we didn’t find out until the middle of October. We had already heard there were problems with the 50/50 rule in Saga Bay and places like that. I have friends of mine at the office who were part of this problem. We were looking at their houses, which had been built only two or three years before the hurricane, yet had not been built with the proper elevation. They were built by Lennar Homes. I don’t think you guys can mention that. They were having problems, so I knew about, about what was going on with regards to the 50/50 rule. I also knew about the dispute with the county, and the home owners, and Lennar, and for all I know, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the White House, and everybody else was involved at that point. But it seemed relatively contained to that geographical neighborhood. It didn’t seem like it applied to everybody. Then the Miami Herald came out with this little map of the flood zones, and where the surges were, and this and that. And we noticed we were right in line for the worst of the surge, and Deering Bay Estates. And yet there were no floods. We had hermit crabs, running around the house. We have pictures of the hermit crabs.

Shay: We had a couple too, we had the blue crabs.

Shaffer: We had these monster hermit crabs. They were like this, one over six inches across. Just beautiful beasts, and just totally lost. So we took them back and dumped them in the ocean a couple days later. But, we found out about the 50/50 rule right after that map came out. One of our neighbors got the heebie-jeebies, and went in and said “Oh, no.” So, he went to FEMA, saw the maps, and said, “We’re in trouble, folks.” So, three of our neighbors went out, and they got independent surveyors to come in and do the surveying. Everybody’s making a mad scramble to find their elevations, because nobody had it. Everybody had their house plans, or their permits, or the site surveys from the time of the deed transfer, but nobody had the elevation. Cause that’s not evidently required at the time of deed transfer of the house. The mortgage company requires it, but you don’t keep it, so it’s not included in your package. Well, sure enough, everybody found out that they were within somewhere between 9’3” at their doorstep, up to 10’.

Shay: OK, you were at 9’3” and the requirements are...

Shaffer: When we found out that we were at 9’ and 3”, our friend found out from FEMA in Miami that we had to be at 11’, that there was no logic to the 11’, that it mattered none, whatsoever. But we all had to be at 11’, we all got these, three of our neighbors got surveyors to double check our elevation, and low and behold we were all under the 11’. I had a trip scheduled to Washington to talk to people for my work, and Laurie was going to go up to visit the children. They were staying, and going to school in Eastern Shore, Maryland with my parents. We went in to, we decided that while we were up in Washington we would talk to FEMA there.

Shay: Right, the personal touch.

Shaffer: Personal touch…What’s going on here? At that point, there was minimal information available, even here. The FEMA people were still trying to set up and deal with the worst of the disaster struck areas, much less the 50/50 rule. We’re talking middle of October now. We called FEMA to try to talk to them. At first they didn’t return my phone calls. Then we finally got a hold of people there, and tracked down the right person in the right office, who was supposedly in charge of all this from the Washington side. I said, “I want to talk to you.” [He] said, “Can’t. I won’t. We don’t have the time or the personnel. All of them are down in Miami.” Well, I said I still want to talk to somebody. There’s got to be somebody up there, it’s a big organization, there’s got to be somebody. He said, “No.” At that point, we called an old friend of mine, and my father’s really, my father’s and mine, he’s in international relief for the government with AID. He was at the time working for Marilyn Quail who had tucked this under her wing, as being her pet project for the 80’s and 90’s. Anyway, he called over to his friends in FEMA to see what could be arranged. In the meantime, my father was calling in an old Army friend of his, who’d been his platoon leader in Korea, a black general who, I can’t remember his name, but he used to be the highest ranking black general in the United States Army. He used to head up FEMA, so he was calling him trying to pull strings. And sure enough, we get a phone call, within about 12 hours of calling these people, we get a phone call from FEMA saying, “Please come in, we’d love to talk to you.” And, we go in and we talk. Early in the morning, I think it was a Wednesday morning. We get to their offices, get cleared through, sit down and talk to an engineer, an administrator, an insurance specialist, and at least two other people. I think there were six people all together. We talked to them. They made a presentation of the logic behind, and the structural requirements behind the 50/50 rule. During which, we fussed terribly, because we thought, well this is really nice, but why didn’t they do other things, which I’ll go into just right now. Potentially, they told us that, a thumbnail sketch of how this legislation occurred. In the 60’s, Lyndon Johnston decided that he didn’t want to have the U. S. Government constantly bailing out flood victims. So, he decided to create the national flood insurance program. They actually proposed this to Congress, and it kinda died, along with a lot of other legislation that got set aside because of the Vietnam war and all these other things that were going on in the late 60’s. Nixon came in ‘68 and tried to reinvigorate it, and of course, it was a Republican administration, Democratic Congress, well not much got done. Until 1972 when Agnes hit. Now, I remember Agnes, because I got flooded out in Washington, and you were in Pennsylvania, the Susquehanna Valley. That’s Wilkes Barre, and Williamsport, and places like that were the reason for the flood insurance program. They bailed out so many industries, and factories, and homes that were built where they had floods before, and had flooded out.

Shay: So they enacted the 50/50 rule…

Shaffer: See, the way the game was played until that point was that the local Congressman would twist the arm of the bureaucrats and the politicians and powers that be in Washington, to get bail outs for all the people in their district. And the bail outs would be in the form of loans, either SBA loans or otherwise, and emergency loans. Then, maybe a year or two down the road, they get a blankout, a washout. “You don’t have to pay it back.” It’s a loss. And so, the people would get the money, real value, according to law, and rebuild, and then have to have their debts exonerated, like that, they don’t owe anything anymore. The Congressman gets reelected. The administration looks great. You know, the only person who has to worry about it is the U.S. taxpayer, who never really notices it because we’re talking over a span of 2 3 years and it kind of gets swept under the rug. Ah, this isn’t what they told us, this is what we found out from other people in Washington. But, they told us bits and pieces which we kind of filled in afterwards. So, in order to get out of this bail out, which was beginning to cost billions of dollars, they said, well we’ll create this, we’ll enact the flood insurance program which they did, right away. They rushed it through. Everybody, Democrats, Republicans, said “Woo, let’s go. We’ll put in this 50/50 thing to get people to rebuild at a higher altitude so that when the next flood comes through, they don’t cover these people again for another flood.” Only, in order to expedite the proceedings, we’ll make it so that any damage occurred above 50% to a house, for whatever reason, it’ll be rebuilt at a higher altitude. The problem is, they didn’t put a mechanism in, by which the flood insurance program could use proceeds of the flood insurance money to pay for this elevation. It was tough luck.

Shay: And if you have 50% damage, you’re then left with…

Shaffer: Whatever it costs to elevate your home. Or move out of the area. We found this terribly disturbing. We had already started rebuilding the house, the roof was being worked on. Had to call it quits on the roof, which of course left our roof in worse damage than it was before, because it had to be torn up and we didn’t have it dried in. And of course it rained terribly right afterwards, so we had no drain at all. And no tarpaulin, and no nothing. We complained bitterly, they had to get this message out to more people. They said they could not. They said Congress was very specific about what they could and could not tell the American public. They could respond to questions in a public forum, public forum or whatever, but they could not go out on their own campaign, and say, “You guys have a problem.” Now, they explained this, that they had proposed that this be done after Agnes and subsequent floods, including Hugo. They had proposed to Congress that this be done. Congress then, would invariably defeat it because this would of course effect the real estate industry that sells property in flood, the designated flood plain areas. Additionally, it would effect mortgage lending, it would effect insurance rates, it would effect everything, so, let’s just keep it quiet. We’ll deal with the problems as they come. They assumed that nothing big would happen, Agnes was a fluke.

Shay: So the confusion down here was an orchestrated confusion.

Shaffer: Well, it was a happenstance of previous problems. They also said they had proposed formally to Congress the year before the hurricane, that the flood insurance bylaws be changed so that they could provide as a benefit monies under the insurance program, to elevate a home, even if it’s not destroyed 50% by a flood, but rather 50% that way they could save everybody a bunch of money because we’d just be using the money from the flood insurance program for it. It wouldn’t be out of the taxpayers pocket. Flood insurance money. No. They expressly turned it down, Congress did. They wouldn’t even bring it out of committee into Congress. They just said forget it. After the hurricane, they tried to resuscitate this proposal. Dante Fascell led the charge to resuscitate this previously turneddown proposal. The rest of Congress said, “Sorry, Florida. We’ve got other things to worry about, budget wise.” Like don’t bother us with this. They wouldn’t even hear it.

Shay: So what did your friends at FEMA in Washington propose?

Shaffer: FEMA was saying, “We are trying desperately to get Congress focused.” Now remember, this is October, 1992. Well, the elections were in November of 1992. They couldn’t get anybody focused on the problem. They tried, they were talking to people left and right. But the problem was, see FEMA was in kind of a weird position. It was an agency created after the law which created the flood insurance program, and other national relief programs. They were created to administer all these programs, so they had no say in what they were going to administer. Then of course, they have this other thing that they do, which is basically build up communications, and bomb shelters and networks for God only knows what else, that’s multimillion dollar projects. But that’s completely separate from disaster relief. For disaster relief, they actually have to go to Congress to say, “Please give us the people, the resources, the whatever, when a disaster occurs,” Not before, after. So that leaves them always playing catchup. And when they, and this of course happened to be the worst disaster in American history. They were really caught: no money, no people, no material.

Shay: So your insurance is covering the extent of damage.

Shaffer: No. They didn’t. It’s a yes and no. Not the elevation, but the extent of damage. Now it turns out that what else, one of the other things that FEMA had proposed was getting along, in the insurance program, providing for the instance whereby insurance companies would be required to bring things up to code. Well, of course, that got beaten down by what ever lobbyists interests were involved so that did not become, it was a fluke that coverage was available in some insurance companies. And it was not. So, anyway, our insurance didn’t offer it. We didn’t know about it, of course. Obviously, cause 50/50’s in our case. They didn’t know about it either, or rather, the people we talked to didn’t know about it. They knew about it after the fact, they said, “uh, oh.” But it didn’t matter anyway. Not only was it not included, elevation not included in our policy, it was expressly un-included. We were told, “We will not cover anything extra, like a, b, c, d, e, f, g.” It didn’t say elevation, but it did say bring up to code. So we were kinda stuck.

Shay: So coverage of elevation was not there.

Shaffer: Right.

Shay: They are only covering a percentage, based an the actual damages which you’d be able to fix on the house.

Shaffer: That was very interesting. We went there with the guy [general contractor]. It’s going to cost us $75,000 to elevate the home. We know this for a fact. It’s going to cost us $180,000 to repair the home. 75 and 180 is 255 to repair the home. $255,000, and you’re only covering 180, we’re out of luck. What can you do for us? And he said, “Well, let’s go over this.” Sat down with the insurance people and we said, “Please understand. We can tear a house down and rebuild it for $210,000, but we can’t lift it. Would you at least pay for tearing it down? So we get from the 180 to 200.” And he said, “No, we can’t do that. But we’ll check. We’ll check, don’t worry. I’ll talk to my supervisor; I’ll talk to my lawyers. We’ll see what we can do. Laurie calls back the next morning. And says, “Do you have an answer.” “No I don’t. I’ll call you back tomorrow.” This is two days after this big session with them about how bad things are. And the guy says, “I’m sorry to say, they said no. We cannot do anything. There’s no elevation. But look, why don’t you come in tomorrow. We’ve got to finalize this stuff on the repairs. We have to go over it and come to a settlement, cause I’m getting pushed and pressed to finish this up. Why don’t you come in and we’ll talk.” We did. This is now two days after that. We were talking about a five day period that was really a bummer. At that point we had an offer from somebody who wanted to buy the property as is. We were thinking, well we’re going to have to move out, do what other people in the neighborhood have probably already done. Look around for another house to live in. And they said: low and behold while they’re going through, looking at each line item, they said, “We don’t think we gave you enough for this. How about…a…You know…we…” And Laurie’s going, “You forgot the garage door.” “OK, yea. We didn’t give you enough for the plastering. We didn’t give you enough for the roof. We didn’t give you enough for the windows. We didn’t… Are you sure the tile’s not broken?” We had beautiful tile. “Just in case it’s broken.”

Shay: So they weren’t willing to pay for elevation, but on a onetoone basis, they worked with you...

Shaffer: Essentially, without saying so, ever. Heaven forbid that they would say that they were doing it. They gave us $213,000. After we had told them we needed 210. And actually, they went up, actually they had started at 140. And just went zhzhzhz, straight up. And so, at 210 we’re .... And so we said, “Thank you very much.”

Shay: Do you know of any other options that were open? Would FEMA do something? Are they offering loans, something?

Shaffer: It’s interesting, no but FEMA as part of its role, orders other agencies to do things, like the DOD coming down here providing security and tents, or Army Corps of Engineers coming down and cleaning up. They ordered the SBA down here. “Come on down with your bags of money, and lend it to these people who are going to need it.” The SBA, yes they will cover elevation, if it’s absolutely required. If, and you have to prove that, and if your insurance company doesn’t cover it. And you have to pay it back at 4% per annum. Which works out, depending let’s say if they give you $100,000, which is rare, they compute out how much it would cost to service that $100,000 at 4% interest over a 30 year period. And they come up with a monthly installment, say $400. Well, even if you, and I think that’s almost what it is, $400, $500 per month, if you only borrow 10, you still have to pay $500 each month. That’s the catch. It’s not worked out like bankers terms. They work it according to their own rules. These are rules, again, that were worked out by Congress. They’re not rules that were written out by some bureaucrat in Washington. They’re rules that Congress built. That’s the same with the 50/50 rule. It’s a law. People sit there and say, “Oh well, this is some bureaucratic FEMA’s rule.” Bull. It’s the Congressmen who elected this; and the Senators who elected this. They both put it in. And they wrote it in such a way, that it is being implemented in such a way. Now I’ve heard that, a lot of people have given a lot of short shrift to SBA and to FEMA and to a lot of different agencies that came down. They do what they are able to do, without getting into trouble, with the resources they have. In the case of FEMA, they did exactly what their charter, which was written by Congress, told them to do, and told them they could do and could not do. And there’s nothing they could do. The end of the chapter is we got the money for this house. We are going to tear it down. We are talking to architects and contractors. We know the industry. We are going to build our houses from now on, for the rest of our lives. This is what we’re going to do. The thing is, is that… we’ve made the decision, we’ve already paid very good money for architectural plans. It is going to be a beautiful house, if we can build it within the price we have. But just last week, an article came out, and in truth, we and our neighbors were right, when we insisted in Washington, and in Miami, with FEMA, by saying that indeed the charts were wrong. And guess what, we now don’t have to elevate. Because the charts were wrong, we’re within a fudge factor that we could get an exemption. OK. But we don’t want to do that. We were told that anything up to 8’ they could pretty much work around. We would have to pay the higher insurance rate, for flood insurance, but you wouldn’t have to elevate. And you could do other things, like putting in special drains and things like that to mitigate the flooding, which costs money too, but it’s better than elevating the home.

Shay: But at this stage of the game, this doesn’t change your plans?

Shaffer: No, we’re going to do it right. We’re going to do it the way that the rule... One of the people right behind us, who just tore down the house to build to the original elevation, decided to put in an extra foot just in case. Guess what, it was good that he did, cause they raised it to exactly that feet now. With his extra foot, he’s at exactly that level. And he’s up in arms, cause he thinks, “What’s going to stop some engineer from coming in and saying well this isn’t up to snuff. We’re going to make it 12’.” And I’m going to be caught with the same situation I just went through. So he’s up in arms. And in truth, that’s what FEMA has seriously avoided saying, is that Dade County has been absolutely silent on it, is that all the flood plains charts came from Dade County, which appears to be... Dade County, when they were given the right to join the whole issue, they were the ones that were charged with determining what was and what wasn’t a flood plain. Dade County’s kind of political when it comes to determine what land is usable and what land is not. And we know that, because they permitted more houses than what is normally permittable, to be built behind us, because they made a change in the rule. And the Army Corps of Engineers, Dade County made them change the rule, just to allow them to build, period, so close to the canal. There’s all kinds of little flukes that happen depending on who’s got the plan to change the charts, and whether or not they have the authority to make that change stick. In truth, we’re going to build to 12’. We’re going to build to 12’ because even though we’re now at 10’ elevation, next year it may go up to 11, and after the next hurricane, it may go up to 12. But at least we’re prepared, and at 12 at least our insurance goes from $750 for flood insurance down to like $200 over the long run. And we get to have the fun of building the house. Despite all the bureaucratic aggravation, learning process, and our relocation, logistically it’s been kind of difficult. But, our kids are healthy and happy, they are doing wonderfully in school. Laurie and I are healthy and happy. We’ve been having a funner time now, than we’ve had... The hurricane gave us the honeymoon we’ve never had, in a trailer out in front of a destroyed home. We had a three month honeymoon.

Shay:So you see some really good points, too?

Shaffer: Our real... The only bad memories we have are the points, unnecessary frustration. Where you come across somebody, or some organization, or something that there’s no reason for it to be an obstacle or a problem. It was the only thing that really set us off, is when there was an unnecessary frustration. Their 50/50 rule was terribly disruptive for us. Half the houses that were sold, were sold because people were forced out. They did not have the money, either in insurance or otherwise, and they didn’t want to break the rules so they sold out. Now, they’ve got nice homes elsewhere, I’m sure, but it’s new neighborhoods, it’s still a dislocation, a disruption to their lives, and for no reason, because these houses were higher than ours, but still not anywhere near the 11’. And it’s very sad, we think this is..., and we tried to explain this to FEMA, both in Washington and down here, saying this destroys things. If you don’t have a mechanism that allows, or an insurance program that requires the elevation, to pay for the elevation, during the time of need. We’re not talking about just any Tom, Dick and Harry walking off the street and getting it. We’re talking about when their houses are destroyed, they came in and this is what it’s used for. They can use the flood insurance money for floods, that were destroyed, they should be able to use it for hurricanes that destroy a home in a flood plain.

Shay: To wind things up, is there anything that you haven’t told me that you think would really be helpful, that people should know about this experience?

Shaffer: Are we talking about over and above what the Miami Herald wrote about? The one piece of advice that I have, and Laurie can chime in with whatever she thinks, is that you should know the house you’re buying, number one. And number two, when a mortgage company says, “We want to see this document,” find out why. We knew about the elevation. We knew there was something about the elevation that required that we get flood insurance. We didn’t exactly know what this entailed. We ourselves are trying to get our friends in Washington to get Congress to allow FEMA to send out circulars all over the country to all the flood zones, saying, “Hey, guys. This is a problem that you may have. And you may want to make sure you get insurance.” Most insurance companies, though, do not sell that insurance.

Shay:And fewer and fewer these days.

Shaffer: And fewer and fewer these days. People should be aware of these things. The government, because they’re the ones who made these rules that are the cause of it, should be the ones who came up with the programs that... In effect, our house could have been stolen from us, by a bureaucrat.