Tampa Bay Times, John Romano
You do everything the right way. You buy flood insurance, even though you have no lender demanding it. You surround your doors with sandbags for the approaching storm. You evacuate just as local officials ask, even though you are hesitant to abandon the house you bought less than a year ago.
And where does it all get you?
Sleeping on a mattress on a hard floor for the past five months while you worry about the black mold creeping up your walls.
This is not the brochure of paradise Bill and Jill Coyle imagined when they sold their home and business in New Jersey and moved to Crystal River near the end of 2015.
But they have been caught in a bureaucratic vortex that the Federal Emergency Management Agency both created and now perpetuates through its National Flood Insurance Program.