NAPLES, Fla. _ Terry Thompson moved into his home in the Riverwood Estates Mobile Home Park in Naples two weeks ago. Remarkably, it was still there on Monday.
"There's a lot of cleanup," the 65-year-old Air Force veteran said as he assessed the situation around his home. Though it was intact, his neighbor's carport had flown off and smacked into his wife's car. Siding had blown off the house. Water still covered many of the streets. Debris was everywhere.
Thompson said he rode out the storm with his dog in the mobile home.
"It was wild. ... The house was lifting and moving and shifting. All sorts of things were going on," he said.
John Jenkins, 52, also lives in a brand new mobile home in Riverwood Estates. The street in front of the house was still underwater Monday morning, but his house was standing and mostly intact _ which couldn't be said for all his neighbors' homes.
During the storm, he said, he went our twice and had to take aluminum sheets that were prying loose from his neighbor's carport and get them out of the path of his house.
"It was quite interesting," he said. "Their carport was peeling apart and coming at our house. ... I was worried about all the debris."
A friend drove by and Jenkins reached in the driver's side window and gave him a hug. "I love you," he said. He asked if the friend was OK. The friend reported that his house was fine.
The stakes were particularly high for Jenkins, who couldn't get the bank to fund a loan for his home. "I put everything I got in the world into (buying) it," he said.
