NORTH MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — It's been nearly four years since the winds of Hurricane Wilma passed over Miami-Dade County, but the residents of Buckley Towers still feel the storm every day.

The two y-shaped towers need extensive roof repairs, masonry work and new windows because of Wilma's wrath. There's mold and water damage, so much so that county officials have condemned the building -- although the county has given the association a 20-month reprieve since a jury in February awarded the homeowners $20 million in a claim against their insurance company.

Adding to the problem: a couple hundred of the building's residents are having problems paying their monthly maintenance fees. Some are in foreclosure, others lost their jobs.

"It's a perfect storm," sighed Mickey Simon, the treasurer of the Buckley condo association.

While Buckley Towers' myriad of legal and repair issues may be extreme, lawyers and real estate experts in Florida say that hundreds, if not thousands, of condos in the Sunshine State are just one hurricane away from the same situation -- especially since the foreclosure crisis has hit the area hard. The Atlantic tropical storm season begins June 1.

"God help us if we get hit with another storm," said Bill Raphan, the supervisor of the South Florida office of the state's condo ombudsman. "Where's anybody going to get money for anything today? It would be difficult."

It's a disaster in the making: thousands of Florida condo units, both new and old, are in foreclosure. Other condo owners are strapped financially and aren't paying their maintenance fees. Condo associations are faced with dwindling reserves and are unable to pay for basic services, like maintenance and security.

What if those buildings were hit by a hurricane -- even a small one?

"It would be devastating," said Ken Direktor, a West Palm Beach County lawyer and the chairman of the Community Association Leadership Lobby, which represents homeowner groups around the state.

"There are several things people learn in the wake of hurricanes," he said. "People have learned the value of having an emergency operation plan and the value of having some money in reserves, such as an availability of a line of credit to address emergency repairs."

Many condos, however, simply don't have emergency cash on hand.

Take the 310-unit Mirassou Condo in Miami-Dade County. In April, officials shut off water to the residents because the condo's association bounced a check and failed to pay a $109,000 past due bill. Residents said the problem stemmed from a large number of foreclosures -- roughly a third of the units are bank-owned or in foreclosure. A payment plan was agreed upon and the water flowed again, but the incident illustrates how cash-strapped the association really is.

"If Florida gets one hurricane this year, you will see a lot of the associations dead," said Jan Bergemann, president of Cyber Citizens for Justice, a statewide grass-roots, community association group.

Bergemann notes that many older condos -- populated by retirees -- were damaged in the eight hurricanes that struck the state in 2004 and 2005. Because there hadn't been a hurricane in years before that, many associations had high deductibles on their insurance policies -- and then levied special assessments to residents when deductibles needed to be paid.

Residents, in turn, used credit cards or home equity lines to pay for those assessments -- credit that is no longer available. In the case of Buckley Towers in Miami-Dade, the association sued its insurer to pay for the repairs.

"If these associations get hit with a hurricane, owners have no money to rebuild or redo whatever is destroyed," said Bergemann, adding that newer condo buildings may be in better shape because they were constructed with storm-resistant windows and other features that make them withstand heavy winds.

Attorney Daniel Rosenbaum, who represented the Buckley Towers association in its successful lawsuit against the insurer, said that abandoned units can also be a problem during storm season.

"The building is as good as every sliding glass door and window in it," he said. "And the foreclosure problem exacerbates in a dramatic way a building's overall vulnerability to hurricanes."

If one unit is in foreclosure or abandoned, he said, hurricane force wind and water can seep in through a door or window and compromise the entire structure -- which he says is what happened at Buckley Towers.

Rosenbaum worries about the 1,300 residents of the two Buckley buildings and how they will fare this storm season. If a hurricane watch is issued for Miami, Buckley's residents will face a mandatory evacuation due to the weak structure.

"Even a small hurricane could cause so much damage to those two buildings," he said.

Added Simon, the Buckley condo association's treasurer: "I'm apprehensive about hurricane season. We haven't been able to do the repairs that we needed. We're in a hurry to get our roof done -- I don't know if it will withstand a storm."