A year after the Tallahassee tornadoes, how’s your insurance coverage?

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    It’s been a year since three tornadoes were reported in Tallahassee and Leon County. Many residents were starting their day when alerts sounded on their phones.

    We remember those events and talk about the recovery process on this week’s Speaking Of Radio Hour. It was recorded before a live audience last Thursday.

    Sarah O’Neil was asleep in her rental home in Indianhead Acres the morning of May 10, 2024, just minutes before the tornado hit. She awoke to find a text message from her mom urging her to take shelter.

    “I was not taking it very seriously. I opened the window in our bedroom … and was just kid of looking outside, and it was pretty calm out,” O’Neil says.

    The sound of birds chirping gave way to something else.

    “What I was hearing was like a low hum, very far away. I almost couldn’t hear it,” O’Neil says. “I was listening closely, and it was getting louder and louder and the wind started picking up, and that’s when I jumped out of bed.”

    She and her partner ran to the hallway just in time. An EF-2 tornado sent what O’Neil calls a massive, old growth pine tree into the house, damaging the dining and living rooms and part of the kitchen.

    Much of what she owned was destroyed. She started a search for renters insurance days before, but hadn’t secured any yet.

    O’Neil and her partner eventually found a new place to live after staying with various friends and family for a while. A year later, she says the house they were renting is finally close to being ready for tenants again.

    “Think about what those tornadoes have done and did to Tallahassee, to people who were very unsuspecting. You just don’t even think about that ever happening,” says property insurance consultant Lisa Miller.

    She says insurance is important for renters and for property owners, and they should be asking their insurance agents certain questions.

    “You need to understand — what would I pay in a deductible if it’s deemed a tornado? What would I pay if it’s a hurricane? Talk about flood coverage. This isn’t just about tornado and wind.”

    Miller is a former Florida Deputy Insurance Commissioner. She says we need to make our homes as resilient as we can. Of course, there is little that can withstand a direct hit from a tornado, and with a contractor shortage, upgrades and repairs may take a long time.

    “A tornado is a totally different animal and has its own set of challenges,” Miller said recently via Zoom. “Not to say that impact windows or bracing our garage door or strapping our roof down won’t help, but it’s difficult when you’ve got gorgeous, hundreds of years old trees that are going to wind up on top of your house.”

    O’Neil says she misses her old neighborhood, and even after a year has passed, some things are just hard.

    “I still have really extreme reactions to weather.”

    Hear more about the community’s recovery from the tornadoes in the Speaking Of Radio Hour. The conversations were recorded last week with a live audience in our WFSU-TV studios.

    The May 15, 2025 show will air at a special time, 7 p.m. Eastern, on WFSU-FM and on the WFSU app. Previous shows can be found here and wherever you get your podcasts.

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