Beach Front
16t
Mexico Beach
O
n October 10, 2018,
Hurricane Michael
attained peak wind speeds of
155 mph approaching the Florida
Panhandle and made landfall near
Mexico Beach as a Category 4 storm
with wind gusts measured at 129
mph. In the city of Mexico Beach,
14th and 15th Streets are directly off
the coastline where Michael came
ashore, stripping homes from their
foundations, toppling others and
ripping apart the majority of those
that remained standing.
Howling winds and waves
pushed massive piles of debris
hundreds of feet inland, destroying
almost everything in their path. In
fact, on these two streets, only one
home survived and was rated to be
inhabitable within 500 feet of the
beach. That one home was built by
Palm Harbor Homes for Ron and
Karen Nichols.
Ron and Karen had owned their
beautiful vacation home for a year
when Hurricane Michael
forced them to
When weather forces you to
evacuate your home, you can
feel much more secure if you
own a Palm Harbor home.
abandon it and head to Georgia.
They had taken every precaution to
purchase a strong, well-built Wind
Zone III Palm Harbor home and
to build the foundation to the local
building code’s rigid standards. Now
they could only wait, watch and pray.
Despite seeing their home still
standing on internet photos, the
Nichols fought mounting fear as
they drove south through the path
of Michael’s devastation. How
could they dare to hope that their
home would not be damaged
severely like the thousands of
homes they were seeing?
In their own words, here is what
the Nichols experienced when they
finally turned the key and opened
the front door of their Palm Harbor
home.
October 2018
Hurricane Michael
The Nichols’ Palm Harbor home is
less than 500 feet from the beach.
