Does anyone have information about how they’re faring? I just realized that Clearwater is a seaside suburb of the Tampa/St. Petersburg metroplex, and while I sure hope nobody’s hurt, I would be OK with the building being a total loss.
While we’re at it, I couldn’t imagine any insurer touching a Scientology property with a 39 1/2 foot pole.
The Pinellas County page indicates no major catastrophic effects, but still severe flooding, widespread utility outages, home damages and unavailable services. The more southern track meant they were spared the disastrous storm surge.
I expect COS would have some sort of press release if there were anything major affecting their HQ.
CoS in it’s glory days would have taken the opportunity to buy up damaged properties cheap and spread their control over Clearwater even more. But they no longer have that much money to toss around. (They still have a goodly amount, just not like the old days.)
Ground zero more Milton was about an hour south of Clearwater. The COS is also not on a barrier island so they wouldn’t get hit as hard as Clearwater Beach.
While I haven’t seen any Scientology updates (although I really haven’t aggressively gone looking for them), I am very grateful that Milton wasn’t as bad as feared. This, of course, does not minimize the damage that did happen.
I recently learned a word, “infandous”, which means “a concept too horrible or drastic to state.” It was in the context of the 2016 forest fire that almost destroyed Fort McMurray, Alberta, but it could have happened here, too.
But, is that not worse? Ground zero at least has half an hour to an hour of eye time, whereas a location that is near GZ will take the full pounding for the extent of the storm’s transit.