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Woman's American Dream rises from the ruins of Hurricane Michael's wrath

A year ago, this is what Kim Sanseela's life was turned upside down by the Category 5 storm, but now she's made a remarkable comeback -- as photos of her new home clearly show.

By Mark Puleo, AccuWeather staff writer

Published Oct 10, 2019 2:37 PM EDT

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A year ago, Hurricane Michael devastated Mexico Beach, Florida. This week, AccuWeather's Jonathan Petramala returns to the area, taking a look at how the storm continues to impact the area 12 months later.

Category 5 hurricanes don't come quietly. After Hurricane Michael became the first Cat 5 to make landfall in the United States in 26 years, it left entire cities in ruins.

One year ago this week, the Sunshine State felt the wrath of the strongest hurricane ever to thrash the Florida Panhandle.

Amid a quieter 2018 Atlantic hurricane season, no other system came near the power and impacts of Michael. Due to the development of El Niño, the late-season surge that spawned Michael came as a surprise to some.

Unlike Hurricane Florence, which formed a month earlier and tracked towards the Carolinas from the coast of Africa, Michael formed in the southwestern Caribbean and rapidly strengthened as it moved into the Gulf of Mexico. Before reaching the United States, the storm brushed the coast of Cuba and dumped heavy rainfall on the island nation.

On Oct. 10, Michael reached the Florida Panhandle around 1:30 p.m. in Mexico Beach and 12:30 p.m. in nearby Panama City. From landfall, Michael decimated the region with historic strength as a Category 5 storm with estimated wind speeds of 160 mph.

In terms of pressure, Michael was the third-most intense Atlantic hurricane to ever make landfall in the United States. Totaling over $25 billion in damage, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information, the storm also tragically resulted in 74 deaths, both directly and indirectly.

M25M Michael_IMG_7534.JPG
(Image via Matthew 25: Ministries)

"This hurricane was an absolute monster," Florida Gov. Rick Scott said at the time. "The damage left in its wake is yet to be fully understood."

In fact, it would take more than six months to understand more properly the magnitude of the blow Florida was dealt by Michael. On April 19, 2019, 191 days after Michael first made landfall, a post-storm analysis report conducted by NOAA reclassified the storm's intensity as a Category 5 at the time of landfall, rather than a Category 4 as was initially stated.

The alteration made Michael the first Cat 5 hurricane to make landfall since Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and just the fourth ever.

"The real-time operational intensity estimate was 135 knots (155 mph)," NOAA stated in its report. "The final best track intensity estimate of 140 knots (160 mph) was determined by a review of the available aircraft winds, surface winds, surface pressures, satellite intensity estimates and Doppler radar velocities – including data and analyses that were not available in real time. The 5-knot (5-mph) increase in the estimated maximum sustained wind speed from the operational estimate is small and well within the normal range of uncertainty."

Making landfall with 160-mph winds, Michael dealt a biblical blow to Mexico Beach and Panama City. A small town, with just over 1,000 people as of the 2010 census, nearly 300 Mexico Beach residents declined to evacuate.

Hurricane Michael Anniversary
Twitter

In Michael's wake, just one house on the city's beachfront remained intact, a home known as "the Sand Palace of Mexico Beach" that was specifically designed to withstand a storm of Michael's force.

"A year ago, right after the storm, a lot of people just had this dazed and confused look," Kimberly Shoaf, a member of the Mexico Beach Community Council, told AccuWeather in a telephone interview.

"You just kind of walked around for weeks on end and didn’t know where to start. Everything was so overwhelming. The debris was so overwhelming. The amount of landscape that had been completely wiped off your landmarks, it was overwhelming. You didn’t know where to start."

Shoaf told AccuWeather that much of the city's landscape and popular landmarks were wiped out by the hurricane.

For a city whose "number one economic entity is tourism," the destruction of popularly visited locales threatened the very identity on which Mexico Beach was built.

"Just the damage of knocking down some of our key landmarks, our key businesses, the water tower, the pier, some of your historic establishments … those sort of landmarks that are no more and sadly some of them aren't coming back," Shoaf said. "That’s just the reality that a storm like Michael has created."

El Governor Motel in Mexico Beach was decimated by Hurricane Michael (below). Just one year later, the above photo showcases the rebuilding progress in the area. (Photo via Mexico Beach Community Development Council)

A notable feature of Michael's destruction was that the storm was still intensifying at time of landfall. Marked as one of the fastest-strengthening storms of all time, Michael's continued intensification through landfall also enabled it to spread its damaging winds much farther inland.

Of the 74 deaths blamed on Michael, more than half were attributed to indirect causes. Much of this was due to the widespread flooding that forced residents to deal with impossible conditions. In Mexico Beach, residents who refused to oblige with the mandatory evacuation orders were asked to write their personal information on their arms in order to be identified in the event of a worst-case scenario.

Mexico Beach resident David Kiser, the owner of Caribbean Coffee, a local coffee shop, was one of the few in his city spared from the destruction.

David Kiser, owner of Caribbean Coffee, shows AccuWeather's Jonathan Petramala a picture of the damage dealt by Hurricane Michael to buildings around his shop.

Kiser's building somehow suffered damage only to the front wall. With his luck, Kiser was able to reopen the shop soon after the storm and help serve the relief volunteers.

“We started serving coffee to first responders probably a week and a half after the hurricane,” Kiser told AccuWeather National Reporter Jonathan Petramala. “We were busier than we had been the year before because of all the workers in town and there was nowhere else to go.”

Upon reopening, Kiser said business boomed as Caribbean Coffee was the only coffee shop open for business for the months to follow.

Elsewhere, in Panama City, Kim Sanseela and her brother weren't nearly as fortunate.

Kim Sanseela stands amid the wreckage that was supposed to be her American Dream come true.

Kim Sanseela stands amid the wreckage that was supposed to be her American Dream come true in Panama City Florida after Hurricane Michael devastated the Gulf Coast in October 2018. (AccuWeather / Jonathan Petramala)

After saving every nickel and dime possible for years, Kim and her brother were finally ready to embark on the American Dream of homeownership last year. But just a few hours of Michael's wrath tore down their entire lives' savings.

A year later, AccuWeather's Petramala caught up with Sanseela to see how her life has turned around in less than a year. Sanseela was able to obtain a low-interest government loan and along with the help of friends has been able to build -- and own -- her dream home, a prospect that a year ago looked bleak.

"Just keep going," Sanseel told Petramala of the sense of resilience that she and many in the storm zone share. "Don't [be] sad, don't give up." She added that she plans to bring her parents, who live in Thailand, to her new home.

A year after Hurricane Michael tore through, Kim Sanseela has a new home, and told AccuWeather about remaining strong through the ordeal. (AccuWeather / Jonathan Petramala)

Similarly, Shoaf stands amazed at how far her community in Mexico Beach could come in just one year.

With properties finally being rebuilt and debris entirely cleared from beaches, the city is ready for its beloved visitors to return.

"That’s what people here have done; they’ve continued to move forward," she told AccuWeather. "The debris is all gone, the beaches are beautiful once again, they’re open, the water’s great. Our canal is reopened to boaters, so boaters can launch in the ramp and get back out into the Gulf of Mexico and begin fishing again. Businesses are opening and reopening. That sort of progress just makes you feel better. And you definitely feel better because the sun is shining through, and you know that things have not stopped moving forward. So that’s been a great thing and a great feeling."

Shoaf and her colleagues have embarked on a social media campaign called #RebuildWithLove as the city approaches the disaster's anniversary. She said the idea for the campaign was to tell the world that they're still around, still battling and still actively recovering.

"Once you come to Mexico Beach, it's hard not to fall in love with our area. It’s very easy to see how people want to come back once they’ve been here once before. What better to rebuild with than to rebuild with love," she said. "Mexico Beach is loved by so many people outside of its residents. The visitors and those from neighboring communities just love this quaint little city."

Above all, Shoaf said she is determined not to let Hurricane Michael have the last word.

"A storm like Michael, while devastating and catastrophic as it was, is not going to define what Mexico Beach is," Shoaf said. "We’re so much more than what any storm could do to our area. We’ve got the love of a community that groups together and is not going anywhere. We’re going to move forward and continue to move forward. When we look back, we don’t want Hurricane Michael to be what defines our area. We want our beautiful beaches and our friendly community, our wonderful residents that make our visitors feel like one themselves, that’s what we want people to know and remember about Mexico Beach."

Related:

‘We built it for the big one’: How this Mexico Beach house survived Hurricane Michael
Mexico Beach’s recovery from Hurricane Michael is ‘moving forward every day,’ but it will take years to prepare for tourism
‘Community means something to me:’ Florida residents rally together to get supplies, donations to Michael survivors

Additional reporting done by AccuWeather National Reporter Jonathan Petramala.

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