Restoring Your Home After a Natural Disaster

Two days before Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2005, Sam and Jeff Burkhardt (an elementary school tutor and owner of a security consulting company, respectively) grabbed stacks of family pictures, some sentimental pieces of art, and a hard drive filled with digital memories, then fled with their then 11-year-old son, Johnston, (and Shih Tzu Rex) to a friend's house five hours away. They had no idea how their home had fared through the storm until they were permitted to return two weeks later.

"It was pretty much what we’d feared," Sam recalls. The house was still standing, "but inside there was nothing but mildewed furniture and furry white mold growing everywhere." The big question: Was their home, badly in need of repairs that flood insurance wouldn’t fully cover, worth saving? The family decided it was, then got to work sifting through rubble, hauling destroyed furniture to the curb and having the mold sandblasted. Two years later they moved back home, only the second family on their block to return, feeling lucky to be alive and fortunate to be able to start over.

Flooding from Hurricane Katrina rose 11 feet in the Burkhardts’ neighborhood, causing destruction to their home, which was built more than 80 years ago.

Remarkably, the outside of the house needed nothing more than a fresh coat of paint, some shutters and new brick pavers for the steps. The yard was another story: Even two years after Katrina, "everything was dead and gray," says Sam. They replaced the grass, planted new oak trees and lined the house with boxwood hedges. It's a family tradition to paint the front door a new color every year, so after the storm, they kept up the ritual and made it vibrant green (Paradise Green by Benjamin Moore).