{"id":950,"date":"2020-11-19T14:41:25","date_gmt":"2020-11-19T14:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modularhomesearch.com\/?p=950"},"modified":"2020-11-19T14:43:28","modified_gmt":"2020-11-19T14:43:28","slug":"modular-home-survives-hurricane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modularhomesearch.com\/index.php\/2020\/11\/19\/modular-home-survives-hurricane\/","title":{"rendered":"Modular Home Survives Hurricane"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Palm Harbor Riviera Stands Up to Hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach<\/h1>

With peak wind speeds of 160 mph, Hurricane Michael rapidly approached the Florida Panhandle on Monday, October 10, 2018. The powerful hurricane made landfall near Mexico Beach as a Category 5 storm. After the storm cleared,\u00a0less than 500 homes were left standing<\/a>\u00a0of the roughly 2,700 homes in Mexico Beach prior to Hurricane Michael.<\/h3>

Two quiet streets, 14th and 15th Streets \u2013 deadhead directly into the coastline in Mexico Beach at the point where Michael first made landfall, stripping massive new and older homes alike from their foundations, toppling others and heavily damaging most of those that remained. Ferocious winds and a storm surge reaching 9 to 14 feet pushed huge piles of debris hundreds of feet inland from the beach, bulldozing almost everything in their path. In fact, for nearly a mile up these two streets, only one home survived and was rated to be inhabitable with the coveted \u201cgreen tag\u201d from inspectors. That one home was a\u00a0Riviera II<\/a>\u00a0modular home built by Palm Harbor Homes for Ron and Karen Nichols.<\/p>

\"RonRon and Karen had lived in their beautiful new Palm Harbor vacation home for just a year when evacuation warnings for Hurricane Michael forced them to head back home to Georgia. When they were building their \u201cforever home,\u201d they had taken careful measures to purchase a strong, well-built Wind Zone III Palm Harbor home and to build the foundation to the local building code\u2019s rigid standards. Now they could only wait, watch and pray.<\/p>

Not long after the hurricane had passed, the couple anxiously drove back to the coast, anxiously noting that the signs of the storm\u2019s devastation only intensified as they got closer to Mexico Beach. Online, they had found aerial photos indicating that their home was still standing, but they had no idea the level of damage done to the inside of their new home. How could they dare to hope that their home would not be damaged severely like the thousands of homes they were seeing?<\/p>

\u201cWhen we came back to Mexico Beach after Hurricane Michael,\u201d Karen Nichols shared, \u201cWe truly did not know what to expect on the inside of our home because our neighbor had called and told us that the water line had gotten up to her roof. So when we opened the door, I don\u2019t want to get emotional again, but there was no damage at all. At all. The carpet wasn\u2019t even wet. We had one small broken window over the bathtub. We just said, \u2018Thank you, Lord!\u2019 And we wonder why we were so blessed when all of our neighbors lost everything.\u201d<\/p>

To hear the Nichols story in their own words and see the home for yourself, please view the short video below.<\/p>