Hurricane Ian is a whole other level of destruction.
The winds were unrelenting, pounding into our Fort Myers–area home and slashing our roof and trees for hours upon hours Wednesday. My wife, our two sons, and I tried to distract ourselves with games, books, music — I tried to get most of a work day in — but I was fidgety. What Hurricane Ian was doing outside was simply impossible to ignore.
The sliding glass doors on the back of our house bowed under the pressure of winds that reached over 100 mph at times. We worried one of them might break, but they held. I stepped outside a few times when the wind gusts died down to survey the area. Two of my pine trees — including one supporting my kids’ treehouse — snapped in half. The winds shredded the branches of a ficus tree in my yard and a rubber tree behind a neighbor’s home.
The winds were blowing from the moment we woke up Wednesday, but they really picked up just before noon. And then it seemed like they wouldn’t end. It wasn’t until around 7 p.m. that it seemed safe enough to head outside. Even then it was gusty and rainy.
In my neighborhood, the storm felled trees, flipped over a neighbor’s travel trailer, ripped off siding, soffit, and shingles, and knocked down power lines and street signs. A neighbor across the street has a large tree on his roof. My yard was a mess of branches and debris.
The biggest concern Wednesday night was storm surge; we were technically in an area where worst-case forecasts showed we could get a few feet of flooding. Thankfully for us, that never came. But we have friends just a few miles west whose homes were flooded.
Ian was not my first hurricane. I moved to Florida from Minnesota just after Hurricane Charley buzz-sawed the state in 2004. My first storm was Hurricane Frances, which hit the east coast while I was a graduate student at the University of Miami. I met my now-wife during that storm. She and her friends brought Bud Light over while we waited for the hurricane to come. I drank it, grudgingly. Frances ended up hitting north of Coral Gables, so it was mostly a nonevent for us. Frances was followed by Ivan and Jeanne. My first impression of life in Florida: Every two weeks you get whacked by another hurricane. Luckily, that’s not actually the case.
I was interning in Panama City when Hurricane Dennis hit the Panhandle in 2005. I was living a block from the beach when Hurricane Katrina was barreling straight toward Florida, but we all know how that turned out — really bad for New Orleans, not so bad for me.
Then, for about a decade, nothing.
The next hurricane to hit Florida was Hermine in 2016. A colleague and I drove into that storm on purpose — stupidly, in retrospect — so we could watch a beach wash away for a reporting project we were working on about coastal erosion. I was safe in the Naples Daily News newsroom, a veritable fortress, when Hurricane Irma stormed up the state in 2017. That storm wreaked havoc on the southwest part of Florida as well, but its worst damage was mostly to a small, sparsely populated fishing village near the edge of the Everglades.
Hurricane Ian seems to be a whole other level of destruction. Internet connection is spotty for me at the moment, but it appears that much of the infrastructure on the popular Fort Myers Beach barrier island has been blown down and washed away. The hurricane swamped the beautiful Sanibel and Captiva barrier islands, and demolished the only bridge to get there.
The New York Times is reporting that crews have rescued as many as 500 people in Lee and Charlotte Counties, and that the storm may have caused $40 billion in damage. I’ve heard terrible rumors about deaths that are simply that, rumors at this point.
In comparison to many residents who live closer to the beach, my family and I are fine. With the help of some neighbors, and some neighbors’ chainsaws, we were able to untangle most of the knot of branches and fallen trees in my yard yesterday. We’re surviving on generator power. I waited in line for almost two hours to buy $30 worth of gas — a limit the gas station smartly imposed.
Living in the aftermath of a storm like this highlights the importance of Edmund Burke’s “little platoons” of society. Of course the federal, state, and local governments have critical roles in the storm recovery, but just as important are the family, friends, neighbors, and local businesses that are helping one another through this mess.
It’s been a tough few days, but my family and my neighbors are okay. Last night, as the sun was setting, we plugged our projector into our generator, pulled out our patio chairs, and a handful of our neighbors and their kids all sat around and watched Raiders of the Lost Ark in the yard. Things could definitely be worse.
