‘I am wholly agnostic as to where Americans are in trouble,’ the group’s co-founder told NR.
Volunteers with Project Dynamo, a Florida-based nonprofit that formed on the fly last year to rescue Americans and American allies from Afghanistan, responded to Southwest Florida last week and are continuing to help rescue victims of Hurricane Ian.
Bryan Stern, the U.S. Army and Navy vet who founded the donor-funded Project Dynamo, has spent most of the last year rescuing people from Afghanistan and Ukraine. He told National Review that the destruction along Florida’s southwest coast reminds him of the towns and villages that have been attacked by Russians over the last seven months.
“Especially with the infrastructure stuff, it looks like the Russians came in and bombed it,” he said. “The Sanibel bridge has a big hole in it.”
The Hurricane Ian death toll climbed to 68 on Tuesday, with at least 45 of those deaths in Lee County, Fla. It’s “total devastation,” Stern said of the barrier island communities in Ian’s path. Even with boats and tools, getting to homes blocked by downed trees and piles of debris is difficult.
“We take the boats, and we beach them on the beach, jump off the bow D-Day-style with hand tools and chainsaws, and hack our way through the pine trees and the wires and all the other stuff to get to some of these houses,” he said.
Stern said he returned to his Tampa, Fla. home from overseas last week as the category four hurricane was barreling toward Florida’s Gulf Coast. He said he rushed to do some last-minute hurricane prep – “which is the worst thing you should do, but that’s what I did” – and then started watching the storm’s track. It soon became clear that Hurricane Ian wasn’t aimed at Tampa after all, but further south, toward Fort Myers, Cape Coral, and Port Charlotte.
“I’m looking at the map of where it’s going, and I go, ‘Holy cow, this place is going to get crushed,’” he said.
Confident that Tampa would mostly be spared from the worst of the hurricane, Stern said he reached out to some of his Project Dynamo colleagues. “I was like … well, we’re going to be okay, and I know a guy with a boat, and all the boats down there are going to be all screwed up, probably, between storm surge and wind and the rest. So, the boats that would normally service these islands are going to be at best questionable if not sunk.”
Stern and three other Project Dynamo volunteers responded to the area Thursday morning and started rescuing people from the region’s barrier islands – Sanibel, Captiva, St. James, Pine Island, Matlacha. Stern said he knows the area well.
They had one boat on the first day. By Tuesday morning, they had five, and about a dozen volunteers helping with the rescue efforts. Stern said local authorities have told him that Project Dynamo got to the area before Florida Fish and Wildlife and U.S. Coast Guard boats. The New York Times tagged along with Stern and two of his colleagues over the weekend.
As they did in Afghanistan and Ukraine, some people reached out for help on the Project Dynamo website, Stern said. Some of the people they are encountering are itching to leave the disaster zone, but others are hesitant. People are struggling with the loss of their homes, and in some cases the loss of pets, he said.
Some rescues are harder than others, but they’re all special, Stern said. “I know all their names,” he said. “We’re laughing with them and crying with them at the same time.”
While Stern created Project Dynamo in response to the crisis in Afghanistan, the organization pivoted and also started doing rescues in Ukraine after the Russians attacked in February. But Stern says his real aim is rescuing Americans wherever they’re in need. “I am wholly agnostic as to where Americans are in trouble,” Stern said. “I’m on the streets of Afghanistan, the skies of Afghanistan, the roads of Ukraine, and now the water of Florida.”
Stern said he and his fellow Project Dynamo volunteers will continue working in the area as long as they’re needed, and until government resources are fully in place. In the meantime, he said, they are still conducting operations in Afghanistan and Ukraine.
