Hurricane Ian — One Year Later: Still recovering
Fort Myers Beach residents work through it
One year after Hurricane Ian left Fort Myers Beach looking like a war-torn village with 16 dead and hundreds of homes destroyed, the island remains almost unrecognizable. Sometimes referred to as Lee County’s playground, the island has been working nonstop to recover from utter devastation.
The days of debris 10 feet high covering every street are thankfully over. Yet hundreds of houses and condominium units remain uninhabitable. For condos buildings, the delay has been largely due to a shortfall in insurance payouts, lack of elevators and lag in the supply chain for electrical parts.
More than 1,000 homes, businesses and buildings have been permitted for demolition.
The town has made great strides though it isn’t out of the woods. The town hall is currently a trailer, which will be replaced by another trailer, with no funding in place for a permanent town hall. Times Square lost most of its businesses – from the ice cream parlors to the PierSide Grille and Famous Blowfish Bar and Pier Peddler.
The Fort Myers Beach Pier, a main tourist destination owned by Lee County, has fallen apart.
Fort Myers Beach Councilmember Bill Veach, whose beachfront home and truck were washed away by Hurricane Ian, is still optimistic about the future.
“We’re on a very long road. When you sit on a very long road, you see the distance but you also have to look back at how far you have come,” he said. “This was uninhabitable.”
He and wife Randa live in a trailer and their garage may have to be torn down, but it’s easy to see why they want to stay. Miles of the Gulf of Mexico stare back at them from their yard. They lost trees though a gumbo limbo, the town’s official tree, survived along with some palm trees and seagrapes. Ms. Veach has been replanting their native garden that earned her an award from the Florida-Friendly Landscaping Program.
For months, they have been unsure if they could save their garage, which survived Ian. State code would require them to raise its elevation four feet.
“I don’t want to tear it down,” Mr. Veach said. He was told he might be able to save it as Beach resident Rick Loughery saved his. Both were initially told a rebuild was necessary, though Loughery has since been told by the town a variance could save it.
“It’s been like a yo-yo,” Ms. Veach said.
Loughery spent five days on his roof protesting a town and state decision which determined he would need to rebuild the garage. After discussions between the town, state officials and FEMA, an agreement was reached whereby the garage could be saved with a town variance for an accessory structure.
“We’re happy that they were able to come to the conclusion that it’s safe,” Loughrey said of the 30-foot structure he and his wife spend $100,000 to build four years ago. “That’s why I went up there (to the garage roof). There weren’t enough answers. I’m glad we got an answer.”
Insurance matters
Many homes and businesses on the island didn’t have insurance. The cost was prohibitive for them. Those with insurance have complained about being reimbursed for flood but not wind. The payments are sometimes a fraction of the repair costs.
Fort Myers Beach Vice Mayor Jim Atterholt has been living with his wife Brenda in a home they are renting near the town hall complex since his beachfront condo at Bermuda Dunes suffered extensive damage to its first floor in the hurricane.
“We had 18 feet of storm surge,” Atterholt said. FEMA was assisting them with rent but that ran out.
One year after Ian, Atterholt said his condo is still uninhabitable due to an inability by the condo owner’s association to get reimbursement on wind insurance, along with delays in obtaining equipment to repair the building’s electric, plumbing and elevator.
“We’ve run out of money until we get insurance,” Atterholt said of the condo owners.
A former chairman of the Indiana Insurance Commission, Atterholt said he is waiting on an investigation by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation which could force the insurance carrier to pay the claims after a market conduct exam as well as pay fines.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Atterholt said. He called the conduct by some insurance companies to be “systemic corruption.”
Atterholt was on the island during the storm.
“We could smell smoke in the stairwell. We thought we were going to burn to death,” he said.
They stayed, in part, because Brenda is a nurse and they wanted to help two elderly couples in the building.
The Atterholts had been hoping to return there by the end of this year but now said the delay could extend into next year. His wife may return to her family’s home in Wisconsin while Atterholt said he may have to move in with family members in the area.
The elevator issue cited by Atterholt at Bermuda Dunes has been seen at many other condos which can’t open yet, as well as the Fort Myers Beach Library.
Dave Nusbaum, president of Island Winds Condominium Association, said their insurance has reimbursed them millions of dollars less than they have put in for.
“Island Winds continues to suffer from delayed insurance payments from both wind and flood (FEMA) carriers. Hiring public adjusters and attorneys is a necessity if you want to be paid,” Nusbaum said. “Supply chain shortages continue to plague recovery efforts with electrical switchgear leading the list. Elevator repair is also very slow as limited vendors struggle with the monumental task of rebuilding.”
Nusbaum hopes condo owners can return in January.
The lucky ones
One fortunate group on the island are the folks at Estero Bayside. Confronted with more than $1 million in damages after 16 feet of storm surge from Ian, they were one of the first condo buildings to reopen.
Jim Farley, president of the condo board and retired journalist, said the key was cooperation. With a damaged fire suppression system and a pool that looked like the “black lagoon,” Farley went to work calling contractors with the help of other owners.
“If you wanted three quotes, you had to call 15 people,” Farley said. They replaced their fire suppression system and ordered a generator.
“It was temporary insanity,” he said.
Critical to their rebuild was getting the cost of their clubhouse rebuilt under $250,000 to stay under FEMA’s 50-50 rule. Between the new pool, clubhouse and condo towers, the place can now substitute for Hollywood’s Paramount Studios.
The fix wasn’t cheap. They had to raise about $1.2 million in assessments from owners to pay for the difference in their insurance coverage (which only covered $329,000 of the damages).
The quick turnaround at Estero Bayside allowed two families who lost their homes on Fort Myers Beach to purchase condos at their building.
Farley said condo owner Mike Cole was “the hero of this place” helping to fix, repair and save items including the pool grill, which came in handy with no electricity for a month.
“We never felt unsafe but we wondered what was going to happen afterwards,” he said. As water seeped in through their windows, they saw dozens of cars wrecked.
Jim Jerele, president of the association’s building committee and a retired vice president of the United Food and Commercial Works International Union, spoke of the irony of receiving aid from the American Red Cross at Santini Plaza after Ian. “I used to sit on the Red Cross board,” he said.
Challenges, progress and state aid
Fort Myers Beach Mayor Dan Allers sees progress since Ian landed.
“Coming from where we started almost a year ago, the town is progressing as well as can be expected. Progress always seems much slower than we would like, but as you look around you see the incredible progress we have made and realize we still have a long way to go,” Allers said.
He sees the biggest hurdle to recovery as being the speedy issue of building permits.
“Our biggest challenge we face today is getting our permit process fixed. We must strive to get our residents back in their homes and businesses open as soon as possible. This is something we can change, and we are working to implement that now,” Allers said.
The state provided personnel to aid the town’s small permitting department, but pulled back in March. More than $2 billion in property taxable valuation was lost.
“Over the next year we will return to Tallahassee to ask for help in replacing the tax revenue we lost that day,” Allers said.
The town manager’s office sent a list of priorities to the town’s state representatives earlier this year, requesting reimbursement for revenue lost, $24 million for a town hall, funds for lighting and roads. The funding never made it into the state budget. Gov. Ron DeSantis awarded an $11.9 million bridge loan to the town though it could be forgiven. The town also received $10 million in stormwater assistance. For its other requests, the town put in applications through the Florida Department of Emergency Management portal to access $350 million for hurricane recovery statewide.
Loss and resiliency
The Fort Myers Beach Chamber of Commerce lost its Estero Boulevard building to Ian. Chamber president Jacki Liszak responded with a booth named Roxie at Times Square to pass out information to visitors and has a new office location at Lovers Lane.
What Liszak doesn’t have is her resort, the Sea Gypsy Inn, which was destroyed by Ian. She said each time she looks at an old photo, her heart breaks.
Liszak and her husband Scott Safford also own about 130 vacation rentals on the island. Of those, only 50 survived and, as of June, only a dozen were being used.
“The effects of the hurricane continue to be felt across the island, myself included,” Liszak said. “Finding a path forward that makes business, financial and common sense is difficult and when you pair that with your emotions, it’s no wonder that all of us struggle each day to keep moving forward in a positive fashion.”
Liszak has advocated for the county to rebuild the Fort Myers Beach Pier, a critical component of the town’s rebuild, she said. She has also called on the county to see more aid for businesses through a federal grant.
Despite the challenges, Liszak said “Every day I see signs and hear stories of resiliency that encourage me and make me want to wake up each day fighting for our community’s recovery.”
Lending a hand
Fort Myers Beach is best known for its views of the Gulf of Mexico but the charitable efforts of the Fort Myers Beach Community Foundation and Fort Myers Beach Woman’s Club are also well documented.
Combined, the two nonprofits distributed more than $800,000 to those in need after Hurricane Ian on Fort Myers Beach. Most of that was through gift cards to families and island workers. That was in addition to more than $100,000 in aid given by the Fort Myers Beach Community Foundation to local nonprofits earlier this year.
“It was an honor to be able to help both the individuals of Fort Myers Beach and the groups that support the community,” Fort Myers Beach Community Foundation President Robin Bush said.
Bush hopes the funds raised will “help some of the organizations that have been devastated get back on their feet.”
The largest recipient of aid was the Fort Myers Beach Public Library, which suffered more than $5 million in damage from Ian. The funds from the foundation will be targeted to the children’s area of the library.
“We really want that rebuilt,” Bush said. “It’s really important.”
Bush said donations arrived from all over the country after Hurricane Ian.
“It’s amazing to see all the people from around the country that have stepped up,” Bush said.
Bush said the recovery on the island is “progressing. It’s going to be a long haul. It’s slowly progressing. The spirit is phenomenal.”
Send help
In October, after the island was shut down for a week with no re-entry in order to allow search and rescue teams to find the missing, Miramar Street resident Steve Martin was among those digging out their homes.
“Send help,” he said at the time.
Nearly one year later, Martin said he’s doing “pretty good” and counts himself and wife Laurie as “Very lucky. Our home didn’t sustain as much damage as others.”
That’s Fort Myers Beach slang for they lost mostly everything on their first floor and their garden. Musicians, they lost speakers, recording gear, amplifiers and microphones.
“We saved our guitars, and we saved our sense of humor,” he said.
The couple performs at Bonita Bill’s Waterfront Café.
“We’re taking it one day at a time just like we always have,” Mr. Martin said.
Martin calls the rebuilding of Fort Myers Beach “a slow process like we knew it was going to be. I see a lot of guests on the weekend.”
He thinks the success of Fort Myers Beach has more to do with the health of the water discharged from Lake Okeechobee.
“It’s daunting,” said Jennifer Rusk, a member of the town’s Marine and Environmental Resources Task Force who volunteers with pop-up tents to inform visitors of the beach environment. “Every day another building is coming down.”
Rusk said the sight can be “shocking.” She has been rebuilding her home after the roof suffered serious damage, as did her pool. Most of her belongings on her first floor and garage were damaged.
The town is “still really a mess,” Rusk said. “We still have lots of cement in the streets. It’s not a playground. If you are sitting on the beach looking at the Gulf, you are on vacation. If you turn around, you are surrounded by devastation.”
No return
Not everyone is coming back to Fort Myers Beach.
Summer Stockton, a Realtor and former town council member, made the tough decision to demolish the home she lived in with her wife, local musician Sheena Brook. They sold the lot after the home was damaged by Ian.
“I felt like I didn’t even get a choice,” Stockton said.
Before Ian, Stockton thought “This is where I will live and die.”
The home was leaning after being struck by a neighbor’s house that washed away.
“A lot of stuff ended up in our yard,” Stockton said.
Their property at the end of Palermo Circle ended up getting a lot of debris that washed down their road near the bay.
“We literally had just spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the property,” Stockton said.
Before Ian, they put in a new pool, new dock, new fence, upgraded the garage and shored up the foundation of the 1935 home. New appliances and furniture were all destroyed. Stockton estimated it would cost more than $300,000 to rebuild the home. After receiving $250,000 from insurance, they purchased a new house off island.
They saved some belongings they had placed high off the second floor.
“We were fortunate to salvage irreplaceable things like yearbooks, photo albums, some clothes,” Stockton said. “The only reason we were able to save any of our clothes is because we got to it right away and washed it.”
Stockton and Brook stayed on the island through Ian with a neighbor. When they returned home, they found strangers who had broken in. Four vehicles were totaled.
Stockton explained why she stayed on the island through Ian.
“A lot of us who were in (Hurricane) Charley said ‘never again’ because they kicked us off (island) and our places got mold,” Stockton said.
“The hard part was not surviving the storm, but after the storm,” she said. She spent eight to 10 hours a day on the phone with insurance and mortgage companies, checking on claims and filling out paperwork.
“It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever gone through in my life,” she said.