Hurricane Ian — One Year Later: Greater Pine Island Alliance

Oct 2, 2023 By PAULETTE LeBLANC 3 min read

Since the founding of the Greater Pine Island Alliance just after Hurricane Ian, the organization has come to be widely accepted as one of the most prolific on Pine Island.

Co-founder Aaron Barreda, explained that when the organization was founded, he was the Commander of the Pine Island American Legion, which, after Ian, became a major supply point for the south end of the island. For well over 80 days, the American Legion had been providing free meals to anyone on the island as a hurricane relief effort, he said.

“I realized I was not able to get access to the county, state and federal government resources-even though we were a non-profit, we weren’t getting the right access,” Barreda said.

He was introduced to the Brace Organization through one of the volunteer groups that came down to assist in hurricane relief. Barreda was told that the only way to get access to the help he was looking for would be to set up a long-term recovery group. Barreda, along with GPIA co-founder, Island Tactical owner, Jay Sanderson, organized a group of volunteer organizations, which included churches, non-profits and anyone who wanted to help, he said.

“From those groups of volunteers, we realized we needed to formalize,” Barreda said.

With the help of Lee County Commissioner Kevin Ruane, as well as the State Attorney General, he said, they were able to do just that in December 2022. With the help of Sen. Marco Rubio’s office, the GPIA received their official federal non-profit status on Jan. 16, 2023. In February, the GPIA was recognized by Volunteer Florida as one of 13 long-term recovery groups in the state.

“The first lady of Florida gave us $100,000 through Volunteer Florida to get the program going,” Barreda said, referring to Casey DeSantis, wife of Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“We went from just an idea in October, November, to — by December — having our Florida Tax ID and by January, we had our federal non-profit status,” Barreda said.

While the organization was still in its infancy, due to her expertise in team building, life-long Pine Islander Erin Lollar-Lambert was asked by the founding partners to come on board as the executive director.

Due to no centralized government on the island, Lambert said in the midst of the chaos caused by Hurricane Ian, Sanderson and Barreda immediately saw the need for a chief organization to take the situation in hand and prevent islanders from duplicating their efforts.

“Things were so disorganized that needs were not being met in the areas that they were needed. Having a central hub of data and resources to prevent the duplication of efforts was their main intent, so help was getting where help was needed,” Lambert said.

The GPIA continues to strive in its commitment toward long-term recovery on Pine Island.

To date, 52 temporary storage containers have been delivered to residents and countless roofs have been tarped, Lambert said. In combination with the partnership of the Rebuild Together organization, many homes have been re-roofed, free of charge.

“Helping people get back into their homes, is our No. 1 priority,” Lambert said.

For more about the Greater Pine Island Alliance, visit gpialliance.org.

To reach PAULETTE LeBLANC, please email pleblanc@breezenewspapers.com