FL - As Sanibel recovers from Hurricane Ian, official talks lessons learned
For our special one-year anniversary coverage of Hurricane Ian, The News-Press and Naples Daily News reporters have connected with local leaders about important lessons learned and what's next for their communities.
In this installment of the Lessons Learned Q&A's, Amy Bennett Williams shares highlights from her conversation with Sanibel islander and hotelier Holly Smith,who was the city’s mayor during and after the storm and continues to serve on the city council, as she has since 2017.
Did you prepare differently for Ian?
SMITH: We did what we always have done. We take great care in pre-storm preparation, whether it’s meeting with our stakeholders, emergency management that would be called in case there was a storm, but everybody comes together. One of the partners are Friends In Service Here – social services. They’re a big part of trying to get in touch with some of those citizens who might have a hardship getting off-island, so they really try to get out and put the word out on who needs help – maybe someone who might have a physical condition, or pets, the elderly, people who might be alone without family. And we work closely with police, with the city. I put it out on social media a lot: “Get ready, get prepared,” (but) we're kind of limited as to what we can do based on what the county does. We can't really call for a mandatory evacuation until the county does. We can call for a voluntary evacuation, of course, but I've been around long enough to know we don't know what a hurricane is going to do. All we can do is ask people to get their plan and plan to evacuate.
How ready do you think Sanibel was for what Ian brought?
SMITH: I don't think any of us expected to see the level of devastation that we saw in this storm, but I can tell you that everyone ran to us once it passed. There was a very coordinated state effort. It was all hands on deck, but we could not get on even our first responders on (the island) until Thursday because we had to wait ‘til all of the tropical storm-force winds subsided so we could safely get our assets back on. Assets from other areas came within about three days. At that point, there were very basic services doing search and rescue. The main thing was trying to find out the critical needs of the citizens who stayed or if there were missing persons, trying to identify and locate them. The main thing was getting the streets cleared and getting to the people that needed help.
The City of Sanibel really has always been forward-thinking, but I hope that complacency we’ve felt for many years is gone now. Citizens are now very aware and will be taking things more seriously. The estimate of those who stayed is about 30% – between 12 and 1,500 people. We are aware of at least 1000 that stayed but probably more likely it’s about 1,200, so that's a pretty significant amount of people that actually stayed on-island.
How soon were post-storm communications back up?
SMITH: We were able to get up and get running on Facebook Friday, so two days after the storm. We committed to daily reports for everyone and also had an area for people to start to come in the Bell Tower.
