Hi, this is Attorney Roy Oppenheim. I'm here today to talk about the aftermath of Hurricane Irma as well as Hurricane Harvey. We're standing right now in the back of my office building with some light debris and there are a lot of things I want to say here and I'm not sure if there's any any particular order. First of all, I want to make sure you know that my dog Winslow has been with me the whole time and he actually has found the whole experience rather interesting to say to say the least. Number one, the probably the most important thing is that when these kinds of national crises occur or major regional crises occur, it brings a country together and we see the major outpouring of people really trying to help one another and for me that's always reassuring about humanity and man in man itself. The next thing I want to talk about is about three years ago I I made a video which will attach to this for public television and local affiliate when we talked about this kind of event possibly occurring sometime in the future and when I say this kind of event we're talking about something which was climatically engaging so many human beings at one time and we had a lot of first-time events that have occurred really in the history of this of this country. Number one, we had two hurricanes that were either level four or level five, the United States mainland in one year. Second time we had the second thing is we've had one of the largest, is not the largest evacuation in the history of the United States where as many as five or six million people literally left the state of Florida over a period of about a hundred hours. And the third thing is we've never had four or five million people in the state of Florida lose electricity all at one time. I mean we've had blackouts in the city of New York but those are usually caused by one particular type of event here you have hundreds of not thousands of electric lines that have been snapped where the poles, where the electricals end up being treated like toothpicks and just breaking and trees and shrubs coming down on the lines and having to have electrical workers from all over the country come in for days and weeks to repair this kind of a crisis. In fact in our particular home which doesn't have power the folks that are fixing it in the area came down from Michigan and I spoke to them extensively. So that's number one and number two. But number three is what impact is it's going to have on the real estate market in the weeks and months and years to come. Number one I think short term we're going to see that people who lost their homes and need homes obviously are going to have some insurance money and there is going to be some stimulation particularly in the market that's not the luxury market which I define maybe somewhere above six or seven hundred thousand dollars. I think anything below that we're going to see a lot of activity and that part of the market has been pretty robust over the past several months of not the past year. The luxury market I think is not going to do particularly well here. I think it hasn't been doing particularly well for quite some time and it's going to particularly not do that well and I think particularly properties that are on the waterfront that are could be affected by high winds and affected by floods. I think those areas people are going to have seconds thoughts about we're going to have what I used to call the CNN effect where so many people are watching these these events for hours on end on television particularly on CNN looking at the aftermath of Harvey and the aftermath of Perhama that it's going to affect the the national psyche to some extent. So I'm a little concerned that high end real estate is going to be affected by this particularly in Florida and I previously said that we have to look particularly at Key West or the Florida Keys as a harbinger of what is to come in the future or maybe like a canary in the mind and I think this something sent the middle keys is an indication of that and here you had you know a major major tropical storm some people are saying calling this level five may not have been sufficient certainly in the island they're saying that we basically had level six storms and in fact there is no level six but the kind of massive destruction that we see is not necessarily a 100 year event is not necessarily anomaly but in fact these kinds of events are going to occur more and more often as our ocean waters continue to heat up and in fact our ocean waters have been heating up and they create so much more energy and power for these storms to really create such such a people in our society. The next thing I want to talk about is what the government is doing number one if you have student loans most people will be able to get a deferment of 90 days that the student loan companies already are calling people in date and browing other counties that and Palm Beach County as well as the other counties that have been affected and on the West Coast to let people know that their student loans are going to be deferred for 30 days. Many mortgage companies will have the same policies they probably will not call because banks don't do that typically so what you're going to have to do is call your mortgage company and see if in fact your eligible for a a 30 60 90 day deferment on your mortgage payment. I know if you're a a a small business owner like we are there will be opportunities to be able to defer certain tax returns and tax payments while we all get back on on our footing in terms of what these kind of storms do the economy I mean historically people used always pray for hurricanes which I would never do because it does dump ultimately more money into the economy especially if you're a rougher a someone involved in landscaping or or or or construction worker contracting work this will create more work for you obviously if you're in the restaurant business initially you lost a ton of business but now you're going to be getting a lot of business where a lot of the supermarkets are still closed and in fact people have to have to you know eat out but it isn't going to be the luxury or high-end or fine dining that's going to do it particularly well it's going to be the pizza reas it's going to be the the the the chicken places that that can throw a good meal out on your table for a family very very quickly I think the fine dining restaurants are probably going to take a hit because right now I think everyone's just trying to to get their lives back back in order and not particularly necessarily interested in having an expensive meal there a few other points we want to talk about here and one is about the building I think that that we're going to see even more intensive increase in building code I think folks who filled along along flood zones particularly along waterways and and and the ocean probably going to have to have their homes elevated so when when the waters come through they won't constantly have have a flood situation I think we're going to see a ton of beach erosion which we've seen and we're going to have to see how we're going to maintain these beaches in the future but I think what we're going to have to do is start collectively thinking about how we as a society can start to adopt to a new reality and our new reality is almost like a Venice I mean Venice has existed for for hundreds and hundreds of years and people have accepted the notion of flooding but they live through it it becomes a part of their their normal existence I don't think we've even cultivated that into our norms here yet in in South Florida and and if we're going to be able to be a vibrant community where what tourists are going to come and people are going to have their second home we're going to have to make sure that we adapt ourselves to to the new reality of where we are other points I want to go over is that I'm hopeful that we will all learn from this and that this will be a wake-up call to ourselves and our society that you know we can certainly overcome this we don't have to abandon South Florida but more importantly we need to embrace what's going on and do whatever we have to do to fortify our our community a hundred years from now it's possible that there will be portions of our community that we will not be able to to just to really save because of the rising tides of the ocean but this isn't about rising time this is about mother nature and having just very very strong powerful forces upon us that we have to be able to adapt so the types of landscaping that we choose is going to is going to be affected our construction is going to be affected and and how we interact as a society is going to be affected so all of you who have been affected by the storm I wish you all the very best you need to be strong you need to be positive and you need to know that we're all going to work together and if you need our help in any particular way our law firm often I'm law and our title company Western title is here to serve you God bless all of you and thank you for laying me speak to you today