When Mother Nature gets mean

As a long-time meteorologist, Mark Torregrossa is weather-obsessed. For 33 years, he’s been telling MLive.com viewers in Michigan, in his words: “how to prepare when Mother Nature gets mean.” 

So, when Mark and his wife invested in a Florida getaway – destined to one day be the home they retired to – he knew what had to happen first. The house needed work to be able to stand up to a hurricane.

Installing impact-resistant windows makes sense in a lot of ways

Many of his neighbors had recommended a brand of windows that was going to cost between $17,000 and $24,000 for the whole house. Too much, he said.

When he discovered JELD-WEN and saw its windows are rated even stronger than the other, more expensive brand, he bought them right off the shelf at his local big-box retailer in North Port, Florida.

“I got all the windows for about $3,000 and a licensed contractor installed them for $3,600,” he says. “So, my whole house was done for $6,600 instead of $20,000.”

They were installed just two weeks before Ian hit.

And Ian was a monster. Rotonda West was only 15 miles from the center of the eye, Torregrossa says. “The house was in the eyewall for several hours. We sustained 110 miles-per-hour gusts to one side of house and had eight inches of rainfall over two hours.”

Torregrossa can’t help but think: what if?

If he hadn’t had the ImpactGard windows installed, he says, “The impact would’ve blasted out the paper-thin window in our master bedroom and bathroom. And all that wind-driven, muddy rain would’ve come in.” He does, however, need a new roof, as many of the tiles were blown off. “But, we still have our home, and many people don’t,” he says. 

Waiting for news

While the Torregrossas were far away – and safe – from Ian, waiting for news of how their house had fared was maddening. “In the first 48 hours after the hurricane,” he says. “You couldn’t get hold of anybody. Cell phone towers were shut down. It took about 72 hours before I knew if our house was still standing.”

When his contractor was able to reach Mark, he gave him the good news that the house was intact. “He and I both feel the windows saved our house from almost total inside destruction,” Mark says.

His property manager was finally also able to get through and tell him the damage looked minimal compared to the other houses he checked on. Says Mark: “Then he added: ‘The windows worked.’”