PANAMA CITY, Fla. — Nearly five years after Hurricane Michael hit the Florida Panhandle, some people are still waiting on insurance companies and contractors to make repairs to their homes, or in some cases, to rebuild entirely.

When Michael pounded Panama City with its Category 5 winds, Beckie and CJ Johnson hunkered down in their home.

“That was scary, that was really scary,” Beckie said. 

Their home survived. But Johnson says surviving Michael wasn’t the end of their ordeal.

“The after-stuff was way harder than the actual hurricane,” she said.

Dealing with damage to their home became a real struggle. A now-retired U.S. Air Force medic, CJ learned a long time ago during frequent military moves to take pictures of everything in case something got damaged in a move. So, after the hurricane, he diligently documented damage, including flooding in the couple’s home.

“It is full of water. We’re splashing the water around, and the insurance company accuses us of false information,” said CJ. “And they’re like, 'this isn’t sufficient. Do you have other pictures?' How many pictures of flooded air-conditioning vents do we need?”

CJ said he was on the phone every day either fighting with the insurance company, or trying to find available contractors.

“And that’s part of the delay. It’s like, hey you’re pretty reputable and you have a good reputation and looks like you’ve done work before. And he’s like, yeah, I have an 18-month waiting list,” he said. “It was just the unknown. It was the — are we going to get through this? Are we going to end up having to sell? Because we know several people that got halfway through it and ran out of money.”

While CJ spent many days on the phone trying to get answers, Beckie poured herself into another part of the area’s recovery — the impact on wildlife. Tyndall Air Force Base took a major hit. Beckie tracks wildlife at the base’s beach, which was impossible to do for a while after the storm. 

“Just getting debris off the beach because we couldn’t get equipment out here to access that stuff,” said Beckie.

Despite major beach erosion, Beckie said sea turtles found their way back. In fact, this year, there were a record number of them.

“Thank goodness nature does what it does, and yeah, here we are getting back to it,” she said.

The Johnsons eventually sued their insurance company to get their home repaired. After two years, they were able to move back in. 

“We haven’t talked to our insurance or the attorney in a long time, a really long time,” Beckie said. “It’s kind of nice.”

Spectrum News asked Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, who’s from Panama City, about the insurance issues homeowners face following natural disasters. Patronis said Hurricane Michael taught everyone lessons. He said now state leaders encourage insurers to pay out damage costs quicker, sometimes shortly after storms hit.

“So everything we’ve done in the case of Hurricane Ian and Nicole, all of our insurance villages — we’ve had the carriers write checks starting Day 1,” said Patronis. “So we’ve had over 10 insurance villages dealing with just Hurricane Ian alone. We’ve paid out millions of dollars on site because people deserve it.”