FORT MYERS, Fla. — Some people in the Fort Myers area are left with huge losses after Hurricane Helene despite having hurricane insurance.
Your Fort Myers community correspondent, Miyoshi Price, met with a woman displaced with her two children due to the damage to her apartment while trying to navigate insurance coverage.
Aleshia Day and other residents of the Riverwalk Apartments tell FOX 4 the staff has been working around the clock to move their first-floor renters out of the units affected by Helene.
There was a lot of manual labor taking place within the last week, such as ripping out baseboards and drywall to replace flood damage.
Day told us that she filed a claim with her insurance company on Friday in hopes of getting some relief to replace the personal items she lost during the storm.
"I was paying for a hurricane deductible," says Day. "This took place during a hurricane, so I'm just really confused and kind of upset at why she denied the claim."
Day is new to Southwest Florida and said she understood the magnitude of hurricanes, so she got coverage. On Thursday, many residents moving from lower to higher units told Miyoshi Price that they also had hurricane insurance, but some did not understand the difference. Day was not alone in trying to navigate the insurance process.
After Helene, her insurance company told her the policy didn't cover everything. She told FOX 4 how her conversation went when she was told her claim was denied.
"She continued to say, if there was a shed in your backyard and the roof blew off and air rolled your things around, then that would be the claim," says Day.
Fort Myers Community Correspondent Miyoshi Price contacted Blake Chapman, an insurance expert and owner of an insurance company. He said flood insurance covers elements of a hurricane, such as storm surge, flash flooding, and rising water from rain.
But hurricane insurance covers “wind” damage that a hurricane or tropical system causes.
"The majority of the flood insurance is going to be through the national flood insurance program, and it can be a little bit, I don't know if deceiving is the right word, but there's a lot of what we call 'write your own' flood carrier," says Chapman.
Day says everything in her apartment is a total loss.
She told me she's working with the leasing team at Riverwalk Apartments to get another unit and has learned a lot in the last week. As of now, she and her two children are staying at a hotel.
"If only I had known. I felt like when I purchased the hurricane deductible, that I asked all the right questions," says Day.
She says moving forward, she will definitely get the proper flood insurance.
