Among the Ruins of Mexico Beach Stands One House, Built ‘for the Big One’

New York Times ^ | 10/14/2018 | By Patricia Mazzei

[Responsibility2nd]

MEXICO BEACH, Fla. — As they built their dream house last year on the shimmering sands of the Gulf of Mexico, Russell King and his nephew, Dr. Lebron Lackey, painstakingly documented every detail of the elevated construction, from the 40-foot pilings buried into the ground to the types of screws drilled into the walls. They picked gleaming paints from a palette of shore colors, chose salt-tolerant species to plant in the beach dunes and christened their creation the Sand Palace of Mexico Beach.

They also installed an outdoor security camera. Its video footage became the only view of their property as Hurricane Michael thundered ashore last week, the most intense storm recorded in the history of the Florida Panhandle.

The camera showed a horrifying tunnel of gray fury worsening by the hour as Dr. Lackey, a 54-year-old radiologist, stared helplessly from more than 400 miles away at the corner of his roof.

“It would buck like an airplane wing,” he said from his residence in Cleveland, Tenn. “I kept expecting to see it tear off.”

But it didn’t. When The New York Times published an analysis of aerial images showing a mile-long stretch of Mexico Beach where at least three-quarters of the buildings were damaged, Dr. Lackey saw his sand palace still standing, majestic amid the apocalyptic wreckage, the last surviving beachfront house on his block.

“We wanted to build it for the big one,” he said. “We just never knew we’d find the big one so fast.”

[Smittie]

It’s a beautiful area. We used to vacation on St. George Island before the prices of the vacation rentals became outrageous. My dad was born and raised around the area so that’s where we spent vacations growing up.