A Florida family suffers from flooding less than a month after their mother died of breast cancer

PALM HARBOR, Fla. — One Palm Harbor family is destroying the first floor of their home, which was destroyed by flooding after Hurricane Milton.

Cali Gignac’s childhood home is not in a flood zone or near large bodies of water, yet over two feet of water seeped into her parents’ home and destroyed everything just a month after her mother’s death.

“We didn’t have a chance to sort out her memorabilia. We didn’t have a chance to make her sad or anything. And now everything is garbage.”

Her mother died of breast cancer a month ago. Her mother’s final days were spent in hospice at Gignac’s home in Virginia, where she and her sister live. The family buried her and sat shiva for a week.

Her father returned home a few days before Milton hit. They convinced him to evacuate to Virginia.

“What happened here never occurred to anyone. It was just an excuse to get him to come back,” she explained.

What they expected most was a power outage.

“And the next morning we woke up to a hysterical phone call from my mother’s neighbor and very close friend.”

The neighbor waded through the waist-deep water and showed them the water around her mother’s car and outside the window of their family home.

Now she, her father, sister and husband are working to cut out the moldy walls, without insurance yet.

“And as you can see, everyone around us took out all their stuff because we had two feet of water and sewage. It smells terrible.

He still does not know the source of the flooding, except that the water came from the intersection of district road No. 95 with the western road over the lake

A week later, when she flew back with her father, the water had still not been pumped out

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Now they try to salvage what they can, sometimes stopping to take snapshots of notes or photos they find. But when tears come, they quickly move on, knowing they have so much to do.

“Our photo albums are melting.”

Without an answer to the question of what caused the flood, the family does not know whether reconstruction will be even safe.

“He should just mourn my mom. And now, instead of thinking about it and wondering about life, he wonders where he will live.