Our Park Model has been through 2 Major Hurricanes, Charlie and Irma. Neither did any significant damage to our park model. In this storm the only damage we suffered was the loss of some of the skirting around the base of the park model.
All sited rigs, park models, trailers and motorhomes must be tied down at multiple points by Florida law, usually over the axles, at the rear corners and front corners. This prevents the winds from toppling the various rigs.
Our park model, now 20 years old, has a traditional shingle roof. It has not lost a single shingle in these extremely high wind situations. Other park models with shingles in our park have lost shingles galore.
Our salvation is we have a north facing park model with a few hundred feet of trees immediately behind us. ( Remember storms tend to come from the south) It seems they protect us I assume the storm lifts over the trees which are significantly higher than our roof. Regardless of the reason our roof survives as does our neighbor's roof who is parallel to us. On either side of these two park models we have a trailer and typically a motor home.
The parks neighbor is an Orange Grove. They have a house in the middle of a grove that's over 100 years old. It also seems to withstand the storm.
During Charlie the park had numerous Oak trees. They were all destroyed now we have about 150 palm trees. They lose fronds but never seem to blow over, now each is almost 20 years old. Also during Charlie things that were not tied down literally flew off, some not to be found. That includes a non tied down Gazebo located across the street from us. My understanding is that it was not to be found in the park.
It's apparent that though Irma was large it's path was not as destructive to our park.
I'm anxious to get back, hoping to be there Saturday. Pictures show I'll have skirting to repair. Fortunately or maybe unfortunately skirting is not structural. Now I'm considering it's replacement.
Though no one stayed in the park the day Irma passed thru, if I were there I would have parked my
Scamp behind my shed, between the shed and the woods. I would have tied it down at 5 points. Outside of the possibility of a tree or branch falling I think it would have been safe.
Ginny and I have camped a couple of places with strong winds and wished we were tied down, once in Texas and once in NM.
One nice feature of our park is all power is under ground. However we have been without power for 4 days. Our park contains it's own sewer plant and it's own water system. We own backup generators to power those systems. Being a place of RVers, the percentage of people with generators is high. Of course we have our Honda 1000 which is fine for the
Scamp. As we age and may spend more time there in the future, we are considering getting a large
generator capable of powering the Park Model.
Just a few thoughts.
Hopefully you can get the repairs done quickly without any problems!
(my apologies).......
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