Hurricane Irma
Aug - Sep 2017

A friend of mine has a house down in the Little Torch Key area which is about 25-30 miles north of Key West. Four of us went down to help clean up and assess the damage. He was very lucky as a number of houses around him were pretty much completely destroyed. He had 3-4 feet of water in the downstairs and garage. We spent a few days cleaning up the downstairs, throwing away most of the stuff that got covered by salt water like tools, furniture, appliances, etc. We also tore down some walls and took off all the sheetrock up to 4 feet. I took a few videos of the trash and destruction around the area although I don’t have any of his house.

These first three images are looking across the street from my buddies house. There are a couple things to note here: First, the water you see in the lot is actually normal for a New Moon. This should give you an idea of just how low the Keys are to the water. Most above normal tides such as a New Moon or Full Moon will bring water into the lots across the street. Second, the first images shows a few items of trash that we have put across the street on the first day. The second two images show the trash that we put out combined with the neighbor in the yellow house you can see.

These next tree images show some of the destruction near my buddies hows. In the first picture, if you can, zoom into the 3 houses in the distance. The top floor of each one don’t really exist anymore. The second picture shows a house a hundred yards to the side of my buddies. The second floor is gone. The third picture shows the house directly behind us and you can see the trash in the street.

These next three images show the garage and downstairs. The downstairs had over 3 feet of seawater in it. Everything in the downstairs was floating and tossed around until the water drained out. While it looks like a messy garage, most of the stuff was just floating left wherever if floated to. If you can zoom in the garage picture, you can see a new fridge, less than a year old on it’s side. The fridge, freezer, washer and dryer all had to be trashed. In the other two pictures, you can see the mattress floated off the bed frame and all the furniture was soaked with seawater. All of it was junk and had to be trashed.

These next two pictures show the downstairs after we took of 4 feet of sheetrock and started cleaning the place up. All the cabinets, sheetrock and a couple walls were removed and thrown away across the street. We applied mold killer to the remaining studs although those might be removed later and brick walls installed instead.

The first picture below shows half of the roof torn off and laying next to the boat. The roof itself only had a couple layers torn off so there was minimal water damage upstairs in the house. The second picture is just around the corner and shows the neighbors piling their trash in the streets. Just an amazing amount of destruction in the Keys!