SANIBEL, Fla. – Night was near and the three men on the rescue team were hurrying back to their boats when Lisa Stasi, voice strained with anxiety and exhaustion, raised their flag from her balcony on Sanibel Island, Fla. Hurricane Ian toppled her residential area into a disorienting landscape of ruin.
“Can we go?” she called. “What are we supposed to do?”
Bryan Stern, team leader, said: “Pack a bag.
Back in the house, Ms. Stasi shouted at her husband: “Beaver, here we go!”
James Judge, the captain of the rescue team, looks up into the dying sunlight. They will have to be quick; the island will soon be pitch black. So they would have to go through the bay to get to the mainland. They would run the risk of crashing into a capsized ship or other unseen storm debris in dark waters.
Over three days, Mr. Stern and his team made trips to Sanibel, North Captiva Island and the City of St. James, barrier island communities stretch the southwest coast of Florida along the Gulf of Mexico and bear most of the brunt of Hurricane Ian. turbulent winds and waves. Cut off from family, friends, and supplies by the partial collapse of the Sanibel Causeway, the islanders who stayed and survived were trapped. About 200 households on Sanibel, which has a year-round population of about 6,500, did not evacuate despite the mandatory order.
Lee County, home to Sanibel and the devastated cities of Fort Myers Beach and Fort Myers, has confirmed at least 42 deaths from the storm. On Saturday, Police Chief Carmine Marceno said between 600 and 700 people had been rescued and added, “We’re going all out.”
Loved ones frantically called the local fire department and rescue organizations during and after the storm to tell them about their loved one’s final whereabouts. One of the groups that recorded names and addresses was Project Dynamo, the non-profit organization that Stern, a veteran of the US Navy and Army, founded 13 months ago to help rescue Americans from Afghanistan and later Ukraine. Mr. Stern lives in Tampa and comes home from Ukraine on vacation while Ian is on vacation. He stayed – and then found himself activating his network of volunteers for surprise rescues near home.
“Pure hell,” Stern said to describe the days since Ian made landfall in Florida on Wednesday.
There is an elderly man using a wheelchair. Hand amputee. The elderly couple with mobility issues couldn’t get off the lifeboat, so the Dynamo Project team called in a Coast Guard helicopter, one of which kept buzzing. overhead as they conduct rescue after rescue.
Mr Stern and Mr Judge said the Sanibel Bay side had been devastated and described homes with their concrete slabs ripped off. Several boats were parked on the roof. The Bay Area is better: High-rise houses still stand tall, many with tattered corrugated iron roofs revealing dining tables and living rooms. Broken tree trunks piled up everywhere. The alarm in the house rang. The air smells musty.
Sanibel used to be a paradise for those who could afford it. Decent and pretty, it’s a charming beach town with golf courses, canals, and street names like Sand Castle Road and Periwinkle Road. The median annual household income is more than $92,000. The island is like a living postcard to coastal Florida, appealing to mainlanders frolicking on the causeway for a quick visit, seasonal tourists, and snowbirds.
“It was wild to drive and see places where we had a burger two weeks ago, and they were gone,” Mr. Judge said. “It’s just a grain.”
During his run on his 29-foot center console, the Slice of Life, the Project Dynamo team was looking for a pregnant woman who had weathered a storm with her parents on Sanibel. It tied the boat to an open berth, climbed over the muddy bank, and reached a barreled main road. Without a GPS device or a paper map, the team managed to find their way using offline maps on the mobile phone of a third crew member, Scott, who declined to say they mine. Like Mr. Stern, his comrades also had military backgrounds; Judge is in the Coast Guard and Scott is a drill sergeant.
They followed each other for a walk in the hot midday sun. A person from the fire department sent them on a pickup truck to the woman’s home.
“Jennifer!” they called. “Jennifer!”
“She’s gone!” a man shouted back.
That’s Jennifer’s dad, Buddy Long. His daughter hitchhiked earlier on Friday. Mr. Long and his wife Pam remained at home, drying clothes and towels on the railing in front of the house. The crew offered to take them out.
“I think we’ll be leaving in the next day or two,” he said. “We have soup. We have a camp kitchen. “
“Well, your bridge is completely gone,” Scott said. “You won’t be back for a while when you leave.”
“I think it will probably take a few weeks,” Mr. Long replied.
“Many months, I think,” Mr. Stern said. The Longs stay.
Mr. Stern looked at his rescue list. His wife, Olivia, a Pilates teacher who was on the phone for Project Dynamo to help manage the group’s cases, wrote down names and addresses on paper. Mr. Stern put it in a Ziploc. A guy on a bicycle drinking a can of brandy passed by.
“He deserves it,” Judge, who is running for Congress as a Republican, said with a chuckle. “Definitely worth it.”
To get to the next house, the team crossed a golf course, parts of the course that looked more like a lake. The rest is covered with dead fish due to high tide.
Betty Reynolds, 72, sits on a white couch outside her front door. At her feet were four trash bags and a storage cup. She seemed to have been expecting them.
But she didn’t. And she had no intention of leaving, at least not yet.
“If you don’t go today, you never know when,” Mr. Stern told her.
But Miss Reynolds, whose first floor was waist-high with unlucky surges, said she hadn’t packed. She did not change her clothes. And she has two weeks’ supply, she said.
“Upstairs is really good,” she said. “The cat and I do well there.”
The crew highlighted the dangers posed – especially to the elderly – by the heat and, in her case, warping and slippery floors. She admitted she fell as Hurricane Ian rumbled through.
“It took me about 30 minutes to get myself moving,” she says. “I just said, ‘I’m not going to drown in the kitchen floor. “
Ms. Reynolds had evacuated due to storms before. But now she has two solar-powered generators and realizes the worst of the storm will be its winds. Neither she nor her neighbors took this increase into account. Now she has no electricity, not even from a generator, and no running water. Her daughter in Washington called the rescue team, worried about her.
“You are all making a very convincing argument,” said Ms. Reynolds from Arkansas. “But this is 47 years of my life. This is not my guesthouse. That is where I raised my children.”
The group trudged back to the boat. Looks like they will leave without passengers. Then Mrs. Stasi, 65 and from New Jersey, waved from her balcony to request a hitchhiking.
“My husband doesn’t want to because he’s going to go barbecue,” she said.
But her husband, Beaver Stasi, 66, arrived. So are their 34-year-old daughter Courtney Stasi and their cat Boo.
“Do you have an ID?” Mr. Stern reminded them. “Jewelry? Important documents?” (They did.)
With suitcases in hand, they walked down the street. The fire department had promised to come see them in the afternoon, but it didn’t. They evacuated because of Hurricane Irma in 2017 but thought Ian wouldn’t be as bad.
“My house, I can feel it moving,” Ms. Stasi said. “We should leave.”
Mr. Stasi, wearing flip-flops, moved slowly. He fell down the steps on Thursday and cut his arm.
“There was no electricity. There was no air conditioning. The food was very limited,” he said. “But other than that, we were together.”
Lyndon Borror and Elizabeth Boone, their neighbors, joined the walk to hear about how the storm had affected other parts of the county. Boone had little hope that her home on Fort Myers South Beach survived.
The sun sets and the magical night falls. Rescuers held him under Mr. Stasi’s arms to get him through the crater on the road. On shore, the family will be met by a paramedic and volunteers to help them find a place to stay.
Stasis up Slice of Life in the dark. Mr. Judge ran the engine and offered them a bottle of water. From the street, their neighbors bid them farewell with the twinkling of flashlights.
Audra DS Burch contribution report.
