When Hurricane Matthew passed offshore of Georgia in 2016, it tore down trees, damaged houses and flooded much of the coast. But Larry and Donna Piper didn’t get much water — about two inches in part of their marshfront home on Tybee Island. So when Hurricane Irma came less than a year later, they decided to stay put rather than evacuate again.
“The water just kept coming and coming,” said Larry Piper of Irma, which hit right at high tide. “I took all my sandbags at the back door and deposited them in the front yard. That’s how swift the current was.”
They had four feet of water on their property, and more than two feet inside the house. And that meant everything — floor, sheetrock, appliances — had to go.
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