After a week in Fort Myers, Florida, the best and worst of humanity is on full display.
If you are considering booking travel or signing up for a new credit card please click here. Both support LiveAndLetsFly.com.
If you haven’t followed us on Facebook or Instagram, add us today.
The melodic thwop-thwop-thwop of a passing helicopter draws the attention of a National Guardsman in fatigues on traffic control. Drivers stop to look up too, matching the rotors to the palpable thumping in their chests. At 500 feet, a Chinook helicopter swings a shipping container below on its path from Fort Myers’ Regional Southwestern International Airport to the besieged coastline.
Humvees, and convoys interrupt the stopping and starting at unmanned stoplights as drivers make way for rescue crews, rebuilders, and EMTs. There are two lines to enter Costco, one for fuel, and one for the store, each wrapping an adjoining street for a quarter of a mile. Lines for fuel can be an hour long with many exiting their cars for fresh air and to stretch their legs between movements to the pumps.
Store shelves, already expensive from the pandemic and ensuing inflation, leave only the most expensive and least desirable items still on the shelves; the rest are barren. Restaurants are open sporadically, but most residents have opted for cooking what is salvageable from their freezers that lost power days ago. Diligent homeowner associations that blocked the use of propane gas grills have embraced them as they are the only reliable source of hearty meals following days of physical exhaustion cleaning up the wreckage left in hurricane Ian’s wake.
Gov. Ron Desantis joined Pres. Joe Biden in Southwest Florida this week to observe the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, broadcasting live from the former home of our favorite restaurant, now in shambles in the background.
Humanity on Full Display
Looters have been reported in some areas, but smart homeowners have opted to live in darkness behind the protection of their hurricane shutters to warn them off. Residents are careful to avoid telling others that they have supplies like excess propane tanks, generators, or food as their good nature may make them a target for theft.
In one community, a simple makeshift yard sign read, “You loot, we shoot” sending a clear warning to those who might try to take advantage of a compromised residence.
We loaded our truck with propane tanks, excess fuel, food, water, and forgotten items like underwear and socks. A bag of donation clothes and hats keeps family members clothed despite unusable water (even for washing) from the tap.
But there are some aspects of humanity that highlight the best that we all can be. One large parking lot is home not only to a Red Cross station, a Verizon emergency tower, and food and water supplies free for the taking with no questions asked but also to an animal refuge for those who may have lost their farms. Horses roam the parking lot off Tamiami Trail (41) creating a strange sight across from the busy highway that runs south to Naples and north to Port Charlotte. Dogs, cats, and birds are welcome too at this unique location.
Meeting with one woman to take photos of her damaged home for insurance purposes, she was in good spirits and then, like a wave overcoming her, broke down to tears. “You work so hard your whole life for something and then in an instant, it’s all gone.” She was one of the fortunate ones that still had a home to return to, damaged and wrecked as it may be.
Insurance companies set up makeshift claims offices in the parking lots of Lowe’s and Home Depots throughout the area to make filing a claim quick and easy, and distributing funds and support quicker.
Active wavers reminiscent of twirling sign holders are at key intersections not inviting customers in for Going Out Of Business sales but for churches offering food, water, and supplies to any takers.
Opportunistic salvage collectors adopt discarded household items that might be resold by driving through damaged neighborhoods with pickup trucks and enclosed tow-behind trailers. Usually unwelcome, these collectors now augment trash collection and help to clear driveways full of items no longer deemed acceptable for adding back into flooded or damaged homes.
Everything that is good and bad about humanity is on full display, unabashed.
Keeley
My niece took a gap year following high school graduation and endeavored a move to the beach. Leaving Ohio behind just a few months ago, she headed south with a friend. Within a week of her arrival, she landed her dream job as a barista on the beach.
Walking to work from a rented beach house just two blocks back from the sand, her days were filled making smoothies and coffees for tourists and locals with a view of lapping waves, and evening sunsets sinking into the sea on her path home.
She saved up for a car, paid it off completely before she left, and had enough money to support herself without work for six months.
Her employer, looking for good help following the pandemic, was gracious and generous. A family-owned business, they provided not only meals for her while at work, but enough to take home reducing her food expenses to almost nothing. She made an excellent wage of about $20/hour in the low season, but looked forward to the upcoming high season tips.
She had it all.
Within days, her home, her workplace, and her car were all taken by the storm. Keeley, her brother, her grandmother, and a friend all rode out the storm safely away from the beach until interior flooding brought ankle-high water inside. Despite an elevation of more than seven feet from the street, the home was still overcome some four miles from the beach.
Empty-handed they slogged through waist-high water staying close to the homes as they made their way to a neighbor with a second-story residence. Her brother in front of them marked the way as he tripped over unseen shrubs, bushes, and debris that had washed in. An alligator swam behind them until he scared it off and they made it to safety.
When the water had receded, Keeley returned to her car and grandmother’s home to find the vehicle had been completely submerged. Tow trucks are a constant sight in the 168-home community often removing two on the bed and towing a third behind it 14 hours a day, dawn to dusk. She hasn’t had the heart to have hers hauled away yet.
Her employer met with other Fort Myers Beach, Fla business owners (separate from the town of Fort Myers, Florida) on Saturday, Oct 8th, to discuss plans for rebuilding the beachfront. The barrier island suffered the worst of the storm surge and is the focus of search and rescue operations. The current estimate for rebuilding the beachfront boardwalk with its own “Times Square” is one to three years and owners of several establishments will head elsewhere for the immediate future to open businesses. Hearing that business owners in the area would relocate rather than build it back reduced her remaining hopes of an eventual return to the life she’d built for herself and loved.
But there’s new hope too. This industrious young woman is ready to stick it out and as the community rebuilds, she’d like to open a coffee shop of her own. With a literal clean slate, her chances of success increase. Investors will be hungry to jump in on the ground floor and she won’t have legacy competitors to diminish her chances for success.
Why Did So Many Stay?
Many have asked why so many stayed behind in Lee County, Florida, and in retrospect, it seems like a fair question. Within 48 hours prior to landfall, Lee County was not even in the storm’s cone. Tampa, a two-hour drive north was Ian’s critical path and most that would flee the storm would take Interstate 75 north where they would encounter it directly, perhaps while waiting on the road itself. Hotels and rental homes were occupied to capacity further complicating the situation even if one were able to get off the road quickly enough.
Others have evacuated in the past only to find that the storm never hit, adding cost, and disruption unnecessarily.
Stalwart Floridians like my parent’s octogenarian neighbor rode out Hurricane Charlie despite a direct hit, decades ago and felt somewhat impervious to the potential damage. Charlie, also a Category 4 hurricane, could have fit inside the eye of this storm.
In fact, when Ian left Cuba it had been reduced to a Category 2 hurricane which is hardly capable of the kind of destruction observed when the Category 4 (one mph winds short of Category 5) made landfall.
A reduced threat hours north of Fort Myers, left a relaxed and vulnerable contingent until it was too late to escape.
Heartbreaking, Devastating
Mobile home communities are littered with stoves, cabinets, and personal effects flung throughout and into adjacent neighborhoods. Halves of homes hung in remaining trees that withstood both the storm and its contents.
Neighborhoods everywhere collect fallen palm fronds into one pile, general trash into another, and special “hurricane” trash of contaminated goods and ruined furniture into a third. Try as they might (and they are trying hard) Waste Management struggled to collect the normal loads.
Among the most heartbreaking of scenes are convoys of rescue boats returning from shore, wet and dripping onto the pavement with the look of devastation and frustration among the crews. The mere presence of these convoys is a constant reminder that some were not as fortunate as most to have escaped with their lives.
Never The Same
The iconic boardwalk on Fort Myers Beach is left to cement pylons and structures that have survived every other storm for as long as 100 years amount to a pile of brightly colored toothpicks from aerial coverage.
Beachfront homes will be rebuilt thanks to insurance and resources, but the rest of the area will undergo a renaissance. Not all change will be bad. An influx of emergency resources and the ability to start, essentially, from scratch will bring change and modernization to Fort Myers Beach.
But there’s no denying that it will never be the same as it was.
It’s important that as it rebuilds, as business owners rehome their establishments, and workers reshape the coastline, tourists return too. As one social post from the Lee County Sheriffs stated best, “It’s still paradise to us.”
As a NOLA native, I know their grief.
However, the real fun starts when dealing with the insurance companies:
* Some insurers will play hardball as in “this is flood damage, not wind damage” and vise versa. (this happen to a neighbor several houses down the street for hurricane KATRINA)
* Several of the smaller agencies will go belly up because their re-insurance is insufficient to cover total loses. During the bankruptcy proceedings, the state insurance commissioner will attempt to handle these claims adding to processing delay (approximately 6 small carriers in Louisiana have folded since hurricane IDA in 2021)
* Florida Citizens (insurer of last resort) will be stressed as well and may turn to the state legislature and/or issue bonds to cover total loses resulting in even higher premiums in the future. (same situation with Louisiana Citizen for hurricane IDA)
* Some of the larger insurers can play games with a “round robin of adjusters” leading to submitting the same documentation several times for one single property (happen to my sister)
* Those that had little or no damage may be required to replace any roof over 15 years old to get a renew or new carrier (happing to me)
* Certain condo buildings will be uninhabitable due to roof/water damage. Most individual condo policies will provide for additional living expenses. However, the condo owners will be required to “continue paying the monthly condo fee” while living away from the building (currently happing to a five story condo building in old Metairie due to hurricane IDA).
* Some of the wealthy, as well as rental property owners. are self insuring for wind and storm damage due to outrageous premiums. They only carry the fire and liability portion of a traditional policy if available (buddy of mine is currently exploring this for his 5 rental properties)
After all of the above, the next stage is finding a contractor for repairs.
I’ll keep that horror story for another day..
Dealing with water is tough. I once watched water moving towards my back door during a major storm in Maryland. Fortunately it stopped before reaching my property.
The only thing I’m less sympathetic to are people who buy/build in areas known for flooding and then expect others to pick up the tab. Obviously there are storms and then huge storms. I don’t know enough about FL to whether this storm hit areas that aren’t used to storms or not.
I’m definitely not sympathetic to people trying to scam others and/or profiteering from stuff like this.
Rich, all of Florida is used to these types of storms. There have been at least 500 hurricanes to hit florida in recorded times. In the past 170 years there have been only 18 years without a hurricane, so it happens basically every year. It’s so reliable that there is an officially named and defined “hurricane season.”
Unfortunately, a large number of people are intellectually limited and just don’t understand hurricanes. They believe myths rather than reality, have a limited understanding of probability, and justify behavior based on exceptions rather than likelihoods.
They do things like refuse mandatory evacuation orders from areas prone to flooding citing things like distance from the coast– guess what also floods in a storm surge: rivers. No rivers near you? Well where does the water runoff when it rains then? It drains to the low lying areas. It turns out that the areas that are likely to flood in a hurricane and storm surge are predictable, and for the past 100 years we have known that this type of flooding is your main risk of death in a hurricane.
Inexplicably the same people who haven’t spent a minute reviewing the hurricane evacuation category of their property, or considering their elevation, or local drainage patterns, turn into last minute self proclaimed experts on their risk, and justify their decisions by relying on single pieces of contrarian data and resorting to rationalizations like “last time nothing happened” and “it’s too expensive to evacuate”.
Similarly the same people who refuse to evacuate later claim that they weren’t told soon enough to evacuate– as if somehow they would have believed the same government they distrust if the warning had come in 6, 12, or 24 hours earlier– paradoxically the argument is “If the government had mandated evacuation for us when the forecast said it wasn’t coming here, we would have done it then, but we didn’t do it when the forecast and the government orders lined up.”
The reality of living in florida is that you have to be prepared for a hurricane, because one is certainly coming. Every grocery store and every TV station in every part of the state puts out information and instructions on how to be prepared every year even in areas that haven’t taken a direct hit in the past 100 years, but do people listen? No.
Preparation means knowing your category, having evacuation plans (plural), and having some money and supplies set aside– and lastly being willing to ask for help before the storm.
This is the reality of it. And the rest of us will bail these folks out and help them afterwards whether they made good or bad decisions because that is the right thing for us as caring humans to do.
When mentioning rebuilding,keep in mind the insurance company only pays the depreciated value of the damage. Inflation has increased building materials costs and contractors fees exponentially. Coastline properties are considered not insurable. Property taxes rising after a disaster is the real reason most businesses will have to leave.
My sister and her family lived for several years in Bonita Springs, just east of 41 but along a canal off the Imperial River that is in a flood zone if storm surge exceeds 6 feet. Thank goodness they moved about a year and a half ago, and my sister sold the house rather than trying to rent it; her old neighbors reported waist-deep water in her former neighborhood. But their former life in Lee County is a good story into the minds of what people think when they decide to ride out a storm.
Back when Irma hit Florida, the storm’s forecast path/intensity was supposed to take a path somewhat similar to Ian, with a “scrape” along the west coast and a landfall somewhere around Cape Coral as a 140-mph Cat 4. The forecast storm surge at their location was 12-16 feet. Their elevation was 6 feet. You do the math on how that’s going to work out. And yes, my brother-in-law refused to evacuate even for that storm. He’s an old-school Floridian that’s just all-in on the “the forecasters always hype things up and it never happens like they say”, doesn’t trust the government to keep the looters off his property or let him back in in a timely fashion, doesn’t trust the insurance companies so he wants to stay and start fixing things up himself, doesn’t want to deal with a 3 hour drive to Orlando that takes 24 because of evacuation traffic, etc. (And the reality is, in 2005, the evacuation of Houston for Rita killed more people than the storm itself. People remember that.) So he ignores the orders and stays, then Irma comes in as a Cat 2 instead of Cat 4, wobbles 30 miles east of forecast, and they end up with a 4 foot storm surge instead of 16 as they end up on the west side with only sporadic damage. “See we told you so!” was what we heard afterwards.
Rinse and repeat – if they still lived in Bonita, I’m sure they would have ignored the evacuation orders for this one, too, even if they had come early. It wouldn’t have ended well this time.
Andrew 1992(?) wiped out an elderly cousin’s neighborhood except for their really well built house. For a month they slept in armed shifts because of the regular looters. No electric for six weeks, no landlines for about six months. They stayed through the storm and stayed through the rebuilding. And the amount of debris from Ian is so much worse. I have to say barrier islands should be left for parks. My prayer’s are for everyone making this journey.
Floridians get what they pay for, and who they vote for. The state that has done more to promote hate, homophobia, and racism than just about any other state now wants the rest of the country to feel sorry for them and help them rebuild? Good luck with that….
DeSantis has his hands full battling drag queens, you can’t honestly expect him to take away from that to help these hurricane victims or to work on the homeowners insurance crisis can you?
Thanks for sharing. It’s too bad the Red Cross has ironically ended much of its cooperative working relationships with many religious groups which can really help coordinate efforts.
I am somewhat glad that we live in the United States where disaster relief is plentiful and people have money to go around. Although it can be political as the comments say. Try living in Cuba, they have NOTHING.
Mr. Trump lives in the state. I would HOPE he will pass around a few Billion.
Are the FEMA disaster relief coordinators walking around with meat cleavers to castrate the losers while handing out the aid?
As a devout christan, i truly believe god is punishing those that are sinful. The looters are finishing the job that god started. The looters are god’s agents. Why is de santis siding with the devil and opposing gods agents? De santis is a bad person and all Christians must condemn him.