Hurricanes don`t stop people from moving down!

Hurricanes, as Florida as sunshine.
Despite the storms, people still want to live near the water. Charley, Frances, Jean, Ivan, Dennis, Katrina, Rita. And now, maybe, Wilma.
All those hurricanes raining down on Florida, threatening to rip apart homes across Tampa Bay, should make the area undesirable, right?
Homeowners should be fleeing, potential buyers running for states to the north. Residents should be totally stressed out at the prospect of yet another hurricane, right?
Not quite.
Some people undoubtedly will pack up and leave because they're tired of the evacuations and the plywood, sick of the canned food and bottled water stockpiles, fed up with the anxiety that stretches from June 1 to Nov. 30.
But plenty of others, it seems, aren't going anywhere.
As Hurricane Wilma slogged her way toward the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday, real estate agents, residents and business owners shrugged their shoulders at this latest storm.
With a mixture of fatigue and resignation, they chalked it up to life in Florida. They vowed to prepare for Wilma and hope for the best. They vowed to stick around.
"It's an acceptance more than fatigue," said Joyce Schauer, president of the South Harbour Island Neighborhood Association. "Last year with all those storms, we learned a lot about how to prepare. So it's kind of like, okay, well, let's get ready. I don't hear anyone going, "Oh, I'm going to move because I can't take this.' "
Gabe Kober and his wife of 68 years, Madeline, have lived for 32 years in a home on Snell Isle. They plan to leave the house to their oldest son.
"There's nothing to worry about," said Kober, 88. "It seems like they never get here. This is God's place right here in Snell Isle."
Six hurricanes have hit Florida since Charley plowed through Punta Gorda in August 2004, causing more than $20-billion in estimated damage and killing nearly 150 people in the state.
Hurricane Wilma is the 12th hurricane of this season, the 21st named storm.
Yet waterfront homes in evacuation zones continue to sell.
Sharon Simms, a St. Petersburg real estate agent who specializes in high-end waterfront properties, represents an out-of-state buyer who just plopped down $3.9-million in cash for a Snell Isle home listed by Mike Shelton, a Coldwell Banker real estate agent based in Tampa.
The buyer is from the West Coast of the United States, where residents worry about natural disasters of other sorts.
"It sold faster than anything else over there," Shelton said. "People see the 40 percent increase in appreciation for waterfront and are willing to take the risk.
"Mother Nature strikes everywhere."
Deadly rain and flooding in the Northeast. Tornadoes in the Midwest. Mudslides, earthquakes and wildfires in Southern California. Snowstorms like the one in Colorado that recently dumped 20 inches and resulted in at least three deaths.
"Take your pick," Shelton said. "Earthquakes, tornadoes, wildfires or hurricanes."
Still, Pat German, a longtime Dade City real estate agent, is hearing more and more from potential buyers nervous about living on the coast.
"With all the storms, they're thinking this is a good time to move inland," she said.
Dade City is nearly 40 miles from the Gulf Coast, but it got soaked twice last year by Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne. Nonetheless, distance from the beach suddenly seems a selling point.
"We are so far inland that by the time it gets here people feel safer here than they do near the beach," German said.
Three new clients are interested in moving from Florida's east coast, which historically takes more hits than the gulf side, she said. And some northern transplants seem to harbor a belief about this area's topography.
"They think they're safer where there are hills," German said.
Janis Riasanovsky, 68, and husband Alexander had to evacuate their South Tampa condominium twice last summer. The retirees both have back problems, and moving their valuables isn't easy. The hurricanes make Alexander Riasanovsky, 77, nervous.
So they have reached a compromise. They recently bought a condominium in Colorado, where they plan to spend their summers. That way, they can enjoy Tampa, and their grandchildren, during the months when ideal weather draws thousands of snowbirds.
"We figure we'll stay every summer and come back after Oct. 1," she said. "Although with Wilma, now we think maybe we should stay away longer."
As forecasters spent Tuesday tracking Wilma's path, the Riasanovskys enjoyed coffee at the Starbucks on S Howard Avenue.
There, patrons sat outside enjoying the kind of sunny day that makes Florida so desirable.