BRADENTON BEACH – Residents of Sandpiper Resort Co-Op are questioning FEMA guidelines that deem some mobile homes with flood damage uninhabitable. City Building Official Darin Cushing said during an Oct. 17 city commission meeting that those FEMA guidelines identify the hurricane-related damage as substantial damage, making the homes uninhabitable.
“We assumed this would be on a case-by-case basis, by the 50/50 rule,” Tracy Moon, Sandpiper manager said on Oct. 18. “Some of the units only got a couple inches of water, some got maybe 15-16 inches, but people can live in them. It’s a matter of replacing floors and some drywall, not a blanket condemnation of the whole co-op.”
Moon said the co-op is receiving legal advice and an attorney representing Sandpiper will be reaching out to the city for clarification of the FEMA rules.
“We were completely caught off guard by the city’s interpretation of the FEMA ruling of substantial damage,” Moon said.
Cushing had read the following at the Oct. 17 meeting, “In accordance with FEMA’s damage assessment guide, there are different degrees of damage when it comes to mobile homes, or as they call them manufactured homes, and those different degrees of damage are affected, minor, major and destroyed. By these degrees of damage, all of the mobile homes in the Pines and many in the Sandpiper, but not all, have major damage by that guideline.”
He said that major damage is determined when water covers the floor system and enters the living space of the residence but is below the ceiling.
“There was some question whether major damage is the same as substantial damage. In speaking with FEMA representatives yesterday in person, that’s what they considered,” Cushing said at the Oct. 17 meeting. “By this description, according to FEMA, the structure is considered to be substantially damaged and in accordance with the city of Bradenton Beach flood ordinance it says if an existing manufactured home has incurred substantial damage as the result of a flood it shall be elevated such that the bottom of the frame is at the Base Flood Elevation (BFE) plus three feet.”
According to Cushing, the BFE at Sandpiper is seven or eight feet depending on the section of the park.
The 50/50 rule says if damages to a structure are to a level such that it would cost 50% or more of the value of the structure to bring it back to its original condition, it has to be elevated to flood compliance and Florida Building Code, according to Cushing at the Oct. 17 meeting.
Moon said there are 166 mobile homes at the co-op. Of those, 120 are shareholders and own the land in its entirety. The other 46 mobile homes are rented.
Cushing said approximately 150 of those mobile homes were impacted by flooding.
Sun reporter Joe Hendricks contributed to this story
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