FORT MYERS, Fla. – Joy McCormack stood across the road from a stretch of mobile homes, townhouses and condos now completely covered in knee-deep floodwaters.
He saw his neighbors walking towards their house, hoping to salvage something from the wreckage. She wondered how she had gotten to her home, the nearby Iona Ranch mobile home, after Hurricane Ian, but she knew the devastation had probably taken her, too.
“I think mine will be a total loss,” McCormack said. “It’s the only home I have and if it’s gone…”
She turned off.
For Mitch Stough and his brother Mike, Fort Myers Beach was their livelihood. Now, it has been totally destroyed.
“It’s leveled out,” Mitch told The News-Press, part of the USA TODAY Network.
Fort Myers Beach, along with Lee County’s other barrier islands, took the brunt of Hurricane Ian’s assault on the Florida coast. The storm, a Category 4 when it made landfall, sent winds of 150 miles per hour and a towering storm surge through the center of the city.
Fort Myers, with a population of over 92,000, is a popular city for tourists and spring lovers. The small nearby coastal town of Fort Myers Beach, full of bars and beachside hotels and resorts, sits on Estero Island, making it more vulnerable as Ian pounded the region. The city has a population of nearly 6,000 inhabitants.
The cities and towns there were some of the first areas to be hit by the storm. Other areas of the state are still seeing heavy rains and have yet to break free from Ian’s grip. Local officials and President Joe Biden say the storm is likely to be historically deadly and costly.
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Mitch and Mike Stough took refuge on the third floor of the Estero Island Beach Club, where Mike worked. From there, they had a front-row view of the chaos. Waves washed over Estero Boulevard, demolishing the lower floors of buildings and carrying away vehicles, they said. His car went flying.
Mitch, who worked at the iconic Lani Kai resort, said the storm surge stripped the first floor of the vacation spot to its structural elements.
“There’s nothing there,” he said. “Fort Myers Beach is gone.”
A couple of miles away, boats could be seen thrown against the road rails, torn from their storage yards the night before. Closer to the Matanzas Pass Bridge, entire marina buildings were wrecked, wooden docks twisted and crushed. Sheriff’s deputies blocked access to Estero Island, saying the bridge was unsafe to cross.
On the island of Sant Carles, the rows of houses were plundered by the wind and water, the roof tiles stripped, the windows broken. A boat blocked the middle of the road, blown off a roadway by the storm. Residents, who appeared shocked, began the monumental task of cleaning up, picking up pieces of debris from their lawns.
For Mitch and Mike Stough, there was no turning back: They said they planned to move elsewhere.
“There’s nothing here for us. Our jobs are gone. Our car is gone. There’s nothing open,” he said. “It’s going to take a couple of years to get back into shape.”
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Sanibel Island sees ‘biblical’ destruction after Ian
A few miles to the west, a section of the causeway connecting Sanibel Island to mainland Florida had fallen into the sea, cutting off access to the barrier island home to 6,300 people.
There, the devastation was almost total. Aerial video from ABC News shows houses with damaged or missing roofs, some that had been moved off their foundations, and rows of houses surrounded by water from the storm surge.
“Sanibel is devastation … it was hit with a truly biblical storm,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said.
He said efforts are underway to bring those who remained on the island to safety. Two people were confirmed dead on Sanibel Island, officials said Thursday evening, part of the state’s total of 14 deaths, though the number is expected to rise dramatically.
Further south, the historic pier in front of Naples Beach was destroyed, even with the pilings underneath. “Right now, there’s no dock,” said Collier County Commissioner Penny Taylor.
Stan Pentz heard the boom of stormwater entering his Iona Ranch mobile home in Fort Myers loud and clear Wednesday. He said water quickly rose through gutters outside his home before bursting through his sliding doors. Pentz clung to the shutters, desperately trying to get out as her home quickly filled with water.
Once outside, the current dragged him up and around the house to some bushes, where he stayed for three hours. Debris crashed into him until he was able to swim to a building for shelter.
He has already been to his house to try to save what he can but it is no use because “everything is under water”.
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Contributor: The Associated Press
