Francie Pucin stands near her home at Palmetto Palms RV Resort in Fort Myers, Fla., on Saturday. She moved to the state from Illinois, hoping for better weather.
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Francie Pucin stands near her home at Palmetto Palms RV Resort in Fort Myers, Fla., on Saturday. She moved to the state from Illinois, hoping for better weather.
Quil Lawrence / NPR
FORT MYERS, Fla. – A year ago, Francie Pucin moved from Illinois to Florida, eager to enjoy the better weather the Sunshine State exterior has to offer.
Instead, she has experience worst weather imaginable.
Hurricane Ian tore through her mobile home park, Palmetto Palms RV Resort, creating a wall of water that spilled over her entire property.
“My coffee table is above my kitchen counter,” Pucin said. “Looks like a bomb went off.”
She evacuated at the last minute on the Wednesday before the storm, as did nearly all of her neighbors. She says everyone weathered the storm to survive in this close-knit community.
Pucin, 55, is an insurance agent in Illinois, but she says like most people at Palmetto Palms Park, she has no insurance.
“It is very difficult to get insurance for mobile homes here,” she explains. “It’s very, very expensive, if you can even afford it.”
Her home is everything, and without insurance to repair or replace it, she lost everything, she said.
But she considers herself luckier than many of her neighbors. At least she has a place to go – her snowbird parents, who live in Pompano Beach on the other side of Florida.
For other residents in and around Fort Myers – even those fortunate enough not to suffer much damage to their homes – meeting daily needs is proving difficult. Still without power in many places. Although the water has been largely restored, there is no guarantee that it is safe to drink, so boil orders still apply. Gas lines can last for hours in many places.
According to Governor Ron DeSantis, the Army Corps of Engineers was called in to help restore water and electricity to more than half of the customers lost in the storm.
General Daniel Hokanson, Director of the National Guard (centre), is briefed on relief efforts at Southwest Florida International Airport in Lee County on Saturday. The National Guard was part of relief and recovery efforts after Hurricane Ian hit the state.
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General Daniel Hokanson, Director of the National Guard (centre), is briefed on relief efforts at Southwest Florida International Airport in Lee County on Saturday. The National Guard was part of relief and recovery efforts after Hurricane Ian hit the state.
Scott Neuman / NPR
Meanwhile, response teams were aided by good weather, speeding up power line repairs and clearing debris.
Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell said that priorities include assisting with search and rescue missions, and working to restore water and electricity services in the area. Lee County is the hardest hit.
“We’ve already started our planning processes for what recovery will look like,” Criswell said NPR’s Weekend version. “So while we’re still saving lives and stabilizing this incident, we know we’re going to have to have a long and complex recovery. So we’re taking measures now to make it easier to recover. make sure we’ve got the right people on the ground to do it in the coming days.”
But as National Weather Service meteorologist Ross Giarratana explains, “although heavy rain and bad weather have left the state, all the rain we have is continuing to drain through the river system. ours, so we’ve seen historic surges across many rivers. across a good portion of west-central and southwest Florida.”
Proof of that was the sudden surge of water on the Myakka River, causing detours and traffic jams for several hours late Friday and Saturday on a section of I-75, a major lifeline in southern Florida. By Saturday afternoon, the highway has been reopened.
David Merrick is director of Florida State University’s Center for Disaster Risk Policy and coordinates the state’s drone reconnaissance. He flies drones over the worst-affected areas, taking video of the damage.
“I assure you that people who have no electricity, no water, maybe no access to their homes, they think they were fine yesterday or the day before,” he said.
But “it’s getting warmer now, and they’re thinking, ‘maybe I need to go somewhere else at this point.'”
A drone being used by the Alachua County Fire Department surveys storm damage in the Cypress Lake neighborhood of Fort Myers, Fla., on Saturday. David Merrick, director of Florida State University’s Center for Disaster Risk Policy, coordinates the state’s drone reconnaissance.
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A drone being used by the Alachua County Fire Department surveys storm damage in the Cypress Lake neighborhood of Fort Myers, Fla., on Saturday. David Merrick, director of Florida State University’s Center for Disaster Risk Policy, coordinates the state’s drone reconnaissance.
Scott Neuman / NPR
One of the most isolated areas affected by the storm was Sanibel Island, which is linked to the Fort Myers area only by a narrow causeway was cut off by the storm. It was not until Friday that rescue teams began to remove people from the island.
Chelle Walton and her husband, Rob, have lived on Sanibel since 1981. They’ve seen plenty of hurricanes, but by the time Ian turned toward them last week, it was too late to leave. Lee County officials have been criticized for not ordering the evacuation early enough.
When the sea water came in and started to flood the house, she and her husband made one last call to their son, Aaron, chest-deep in water.
It rushed in just in time to save the Waltons from drowning. But without electricity or cell service, they couldn’t call Aaron for three days.
He could do nothing but wait and worry.
Aaron Walton said: “I don’t want the worst. “I’ve been trying to stay optimistic, and it’s been difficult.”
