A tiny Florida beach town is rebuilding after a hurricane. Is it becoming a preserve of the rich?
They’re calling their neighborhood Paradise. And it’s the first town I’ve visited that doesn’t appear to have suffered a severe weather event.
I walk down Seaside Road, and you can see the old houses and bungalows scattered along the road. They’re being rebuilt in their entirety. It’s such a strange sight to see that I can only imagine how it would look if the whole town was to be rebuilt.
You can tell that people are being helped and restored, but the sense of being removed from the natural world is strong. When you drive down the long stretch of road, you can only see the beach, ocean, and sky.
I get my first glimpse of the ocean while driving along Seaside Road. The ocean, which was once only a small part of the beach, has become a very large part of the beach. There’s a large, paved area that is for parking, and a paved area that is for walking.
There’s a large parking lot that is used for visitors. People will park, walk down to the beach, and have picnics. It’s very nice to see this.
My first stop is to drive around. It’s really a beautiful area. You see many different kinds of palm trees. Some of them almost have a kind of golden color. They’re in bloom. The yellow birds are also a beautiful sight. You have to walk down to the water because there isn’t any sidewalk.
There are a few stores at the front and in the back of the shopping complex. There are restaurants in both of them, so there are opportunities to go out for a meal.
The beach is being rebuilt, but there are also some signs that the ocean is being saved. In the sand, you can see the names of the people who helped to build the beach.
There’s a little shack where the city keeps the sand from the beach. I walk up to the shack and look in. There are two tiny people wearing life jackets. They don’t say anything when I show them my camera. The shack is only just a hut, but as you can see, it’s very nice to build a shack in the middle of the ocean.
There’s a lot of