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No roof over their heads

Many in South Florida begin riding out the storm season under blue tarps.

By TAMARA LUSH
Published June 5, 2006

HIALEAH — The other day, Willie Burden woke up in his bedroom and felt raindrops on his face.
The 81-year-old retiree wasn’t surprised: His roof has leaked ever since Hurricane Wilma blasted through South Florida in October with 120-mph winds.

Burden has lived in the little green house for 50 years, raised 12 children there, became a widower there. Now, just to get to the refrigerator, he has to navigate around two blue buckets that catch the water from the slowly collapsing ceiling.

Like thousands of South Florida residents, Burden’s roof was blown apart by the storm. And, like thousands of others, Burden didn’t have the money to move or to make the needed repairs before this year’s hurricane season began. With no insurance and only a Social Security check, paying for a five-figure roof repair was out of the question.

“I knew if I had to pay someone to fix it, I wouldn’t be able to do it,” Burden said.
In 2005, South Florida was hit with two hurricanes — Katrina, with 80-mph winds, and Wilma — that heavily damaged four counties. A new hurricane season is here, but the effects of last year’s storms are felt still in ways small and large.

Blue tarps cover hundreds, if not thousands, of roofs, especially in western Broward County. Contractors report a six-month wait for repairs. Some billboards are mere skeletons and some signs haven’t been replaced. Heavy rains recently forced families living in slightly damaged apartments to move out.

Officials worry that if a strong hurricane hits South Florida this year, people who haven’t fully recovered from last year’s storms will lose everything. Even though the hurricanes weren’t as devastating to South Florida as when Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, they prove that sustained, heavy winds can cause damage that takes months, if not years, to repair. Experts say this is a lesson for the Tampa Bay area, which hasn’t been hit by a hurricane in 85 years.

“We’ve made tremendous progress in the last six months, but we’ve still got a long way to go,” sighed Broward County Mayor Ben Graber last week.

Graber said that his county has added thousands of shelter beds, for fear that some already weak roofs will collapse even during a small storm.

For many homeowners affected by storms, getting insurance money has been the first hurdle to making repairs. After the 2004 hurricane season, 1.7-million claims were filed statewide, said state Department of Financial Services spokeswoman Tami Torres. Another nearly 1.2-million were filed in 2005. While homeowners and insurance companies have been working to resolve the claims and make payments, the department has more than 1,000 mediations scheduled through June, representing homeowners who still have unresolved claims.

“There are so many homeowners who have expressed frustration because they still have a blue tarp on their roofs,” Torres said.

One problem, explained Bill Dumbaugh of Broward County’s Board of Rules and Appeals, is that contractors can’t fix leaky roofs fast enough. Eight hurricanes in Florida since 2004 — and the destruction of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast — have exacerbated an already existing cement, shingle and barrel tile shortage. Add those shortages to a dearth of workers and countless homeowners still haggling with insurance companies, and you’ve got a hurricane damage deficit, Dumbaugh said.

“I would love to have it all done before the season happens,” Dumbaugh said. “Just driving around the county, I would say at the rate the contractors are working, homeowners should be out of the hole in three more months. It’s not pretty.”

According to the Army Corps of Engineers, 42,425 structures in Florida were covered in the ubiquitous blue tarps during the 2005 hurricane season. About 75 percent of those structures were in Broward and Miami-Dade counties. They are unsure exactly how many are still covered in blue tarps, but anyone flying into South Florida can see hundreds upon hundreds of blue tarps from the air.

Everyone agrees that one good thing came out of last year’s hurricanes.

“They loosened the last, worst 10 percent of the roofing,” said Miami roofing contractor Anthony Wilson. Miami-Dade County’s roofs fared much better than Broward’s, said Wilson, because Miami-Dade officials tightened roofing codes after Hurricane Andrew. The new roofs in Broward should survive a stronger storm than Wilma, he said.

Mark Zehnal, a roofing code specialist with Miami-Dade County, said that even homes still covered in blue tarps have a chance to ride out storm season with new, stronger roofs.

A group of community leaders in Miami-Dade County formed No Blue Roofs, a nonprofit program that will help low-income home­owners repair roofs damaged as a result of Hurricane Wilma. Officials say the program will be funded through donations; most roofs will cost about $10,000 to repair.

Burden, the Hialeah retiree who has lived with a gaping hole in his kitchen ceiling for months, has qualified for the program and will be among the first to receive a new roof. Burden will be glad to get rid of the buckets and the fear that the roof may collapse on his head.

“Any time a big rain comes, the roof just falls on the floor,” he said. “One section just fell last week. Whomp! The whole section dropped.”

Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report, which used information from the Associated Press. Tamara Lush can be reached at (727) 893-8612 or at lush@sptimes.com.

[Last modified June 5, 2006, 22:12:11]