TAMPA, Fla. – The My Safe Florida Home Program, helping cut property insurance costs for Floridians, reopened on Monday and will start offering grants again.

This program offers matching grants for Floridians of up to $10,000 to homeowners who shore up their homes with storm-protective upgrades like hurricane-safe doors or windows.

READ: Florida program aims to help ease sting of high property insurance premiums

Governor Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill 7028 into law in April to allocate $200 million to the My Safe Florida Home Program.

READ: New Florida laws going into effect on July 1: Here are some of the highlights

The bill also allows applicants under the program to still receive home inspections even if they’re not eligible for a grant.

First-time applicants must complete an initial wind-mitigation inspection to proceed to the grant application. That inspection will then provide homeowners with:

• The opportunity to share that report with their insurance carrier to make sure they’re receiving all possible discounts on the hurricane portion of their home insurance premium
• A roadmap to retrofitting their home with improvements to strengthen it against hurricanes

Existing users can access their portal account to see their Grant Group Category number. 

My Safe Florida Home was established in 2006 and brought back in 2022. 

To apply, click here.

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A local organization said it is prepared to help bring supplies to Haiti if needed following Hurricane Beryl.

Maggie Saint Jean, who runs the Daily Bread Distribution Center in Central Florida, is urging the community to donate items to help both Haiti and local residents.

The organization also said it’s challenging to send supplies to Haiti, but they are determined to help.

“Just because it’s difficult, doesn’t mean people aren’t in need. We still have to make our efforts,” Saint Jean said.

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Saint Jean said whether it’s gang violence or storm damage, their mission doesn’t change.

“The focus has to be the same,” Saint Jean said. Whether it’s one issue or five issues, it’s the people. Once you can see the people and their needs, then your focus doesn’t change. Things will come and things will go, but our focus will never change.”

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Since publishing NASA Earth Observatory Goes to the Beach in July 2017, we have explored even more of the planet’s coasts via satellite images and astronaut photographs. This week, we return to the beach with a look back at some of our favorite seaside stories published in recent years. The images and text on this page first appeared on November 19, 2023.

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station took this photograph of Destin, Florida, a beach city situated on the Gulf of Mexico coastline.

The city is built on a peninsula that separates the Gulf of Mexico from the Choctawhatchee Bay. Ship transport between the Gulf of Mexico and the bay is possible via the East Pass, while a bridge connects Destin to Santa Rosa Island. The thin white streaks seen in the water are wakes from boats.

Destin is part of Florida’s Emerald Coast, an area that spans about 100 miles (160 kilometers) of the Florida Panhandle. The beaches in this area are known for their “sugary white” sand and green-toned waters. The white sand is comprised primarily of quartz grains that were transported from the southern Appalachian Mountains by the Apalachicola River system. Sunlight interacting with algae in the water produces the emerald color.

Destin’s white sandy beaches, emerald waters, and proximity to the Gulf of Mexico make the town a popular tourist destination. Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection reports an estimated total of 4.5 million annual visitors to Florida’s Emerald Coast. Many tourists visit the area because Destin is a major fishing destination.

This peninsula was initially a barrier island. Over time, coastal processes including hurricanes, sand transport, and changing sea levels connected the peninsula to mainland Florida.

The astronaut used a high-focal-length lens to capture this shot. High-focal-length lenses make it possible for space station crew to take high-resolution photographs of the surface with handheld digital cameras while in a low Earth orbit of approximately 254 miles (400 kilometers).

Astronaut photograph ISS069-E-39255 was acquired on July 30, 2023, with a Nikon D5 digital camera using a focal length of 1150 millimeters. The image was provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit at Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by a member of the Expedition 69 crew. It has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by Minna Adel Rubio, GeoControl Systems, JETS Contract at NASA-JSC.