manufacturedhomelivingnews.com Manufactured Home Living News
Americans watched, listened, and millions anxiously awaited news last month about just how deadly and destructive Hurricane Irma would be.
But John Jenkins, featured in the first video below, live through it.
Jenkins weathered the storm in his home, and can now tell his dramatic story.
In Florida, where about one-in-ten live in a pre-HUD Code mobile home – or post-June 15, 1976 manufactured home – the frequent warnings for those residents was hard to miss.
Just how bad was it?
“In Florida, 24 people have died in connection with the storm,” ABC reported in mid-September, “including a weather-related car accident in the Florida Keys and the eight people who died after Irma knocked out air conditioning at a nursing home in Hollywood [FL].”
Was this Next Media Claim Accurate?
U.S. News gave one of several reports that made the destruction of mobile or manufactured homes sound widespread. “In the Florida Keys, which took the brunt of Hurricane Irma, half of the up to 15,000 residential homes damaged or destroyed were mobile homes.”
A source close to the Florida Manufactured Housing Association (FMHA) told MHLivingNews that the report quoted above missed the mark.
“The U.S. News article is inaccurate,” stated the Florida-based professional. “There are 9,814 mobile and manufactured homes in Monroe County, FL, which includes all of the Keys. The article states that ¾ of those homes (1/2 of 15,000) were destroyed. No way.”
“I was in the Keys [last] week, and did not find a single post-Andrew manufactured home (constructed after July 13, 1994) with structural damage. I must admit that I didn’t look at every home, but our new homes performed well.”
The Sunshine State professional also told MHLivingNews, “I also travelled to the Naples/Marco area in Southwest Florida and again did not identify any post-Andrew homes with structural damage.”
Federal, state, insurance, and other officials are going to be doing post-storm assessments. As was widely reported, all types of commercial and residential structures suffered various degrees of damage or destruction.
FMHA is in the process of conducting a third-party damage assessment that will provide hard facts to support our visual observations. The video interview shown above was reportedly “filmed four days after the hurricane.”
Compare the home you see with what you see in the CBS News video from the same time frame.
Hurricanes, like tornadoes, are equal opportunity killers and destroyers, as the CBS News video below reveals. A still photo near the top of this article comes from this video.
As MHLivingNews has reported for years, third party research demonstrates that a properly installed manufactured home is as strong and safe as conventional housing, and in some cases, safer.
In case you missed it, see what an elected official in earthquake-and-tornado prone Oklahoma had to say about the safety, quality, and appeal of modern manufactured homes. That report, is linked here.
To see our widely praised windstorm/tornado/hurricane video, click here. The more you know, the better. ## (News, fact checks.)
(Image credits are as shown above, and when provided by third parties, are shared under fair use guidelines.)
Submitted by Soheyla Kovach to MHLivingNews.com. Video production, by Soheyla Kovach.
