RESIDENTS ALLOWED TO RETURN TO ISLAND SLAMMED BY IAN
FORT MYERS, Fla. — Residents were allowed to return to a coastal island that was decimated by Hurricane Ian on Saturday with a warning from the governor that the disaster isn’t over.
Many of the homes still standing on Estero Island lack basic services, so portable restrooms, hand-washing stations, shower trailers and other essentials were trucked in for residents who want to stay, Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a news conference. Debris still has to be removed before rebuilding can begin.
“There’s a lot more to do, and really some of the hardest stuff is still ahead of us,” DeSantis said.
While residents were initially allowed back on the island after the storm, officials shut down access to allow teams to finish searching the wreckage building by building for possible victims. Once the work was done, residents lined up and were allowed to return on buses.
Shana Dam went to see what was left of her parents’ house.
“It’s gone,” she told the Fort Myers News-Press. “It’s just gone.”
Just getting around the island, home to most of Fort Myers Beach, is difficult because of storm debris, but heavy equipment was used to clear roads.
With handmade signs all over the area warning that looters will be shot by homeowners, Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said only nine such theft cases had been reported.
The Florida Medical Examiners Commission has reported 94 storm-related deaths in Florida so far. Most were in the worst-hit Lee County that includes the greater Fort Myers area and nearby Gulf Coast islands. At least half of the confirmed victims in the state were 65 years and older and more than two-thirds were 50 and older.
Five people were also killed in North Carolina, three in Cuba and one in Virginia.
Ian is the third-deadliest storm to hit the mainland United States in the 21st century, behind Hurricane Katrina, which left about 1,400 people dead, and Hurricane Sandy, which had a total death count of 233 despite weakening to a tropical storm just before making U.S. landfall. The deadliest hurricane to ever hit the U.S. was the Great Galveston Hurricane in 1900 that killed as many as 8,000 people.
Ian, a Category 4 storm with sustained winds of 150 miles per hour, unleashed torrents of rain and caused extensive flooding and damage. The deluge turned streets into gushing rivers. Backyard waterways overflowed into neighborhoods, sometimes by more than a dozen feet, tossing boats onto yards and roadways. Beaches disappeared, as ocean surges pushed shorelines far inland. Officials estimate the storm has caused billions of dollars in damage.
Betty Parker and her husband, Wiley, live in Fort Myers, but they’re about 20 miles inland. Their neighborhood on the Caloosahatchee River was built in 1915 and had never flooded until now, Parker said.
“Quite a few of the houses around us were declared a total loss,” she said Friday. “Most the people I’ve talked to, the neighbors, don’t have flood insurance because it is too expensive, and it has never flooded here in over 100 years.”
The Parkers were lucky. The water came within 5 inches of their house, but not inside, she said. However, it did flood their garage, where they had moved their 2000 Toyota MR2 sports car.
“So many people lost their cars,” Parker said. “They moved them inside because they were worried about wind. Nobody thought about the water.”