FL - One Year Later: Fort Meyers Beach Rebuilds After Hurricane Ian
Last week marked one year since Hurricane Ian wreaked havoc on Florida, particularly its coastal communities.
The people of Fort Myers Beach mostly survived. How many can afford to stay remains an open question.
It took Anita Cereceda about four months before she could drive down Estero Boulevard without crying. Everywhere she looked, the former Fort Myers Beach mayor saw evidence of destruction and personal loss. The store her parents had opened back in 1985 was blown apart by Hurricane Ian, along with two other businesses she owned. Her house was still standing, but its interior had to be stripped to the studs and the joists. Wind and water had lifted refrigerators, kayaks and front doors — various pieces of other people’s lives — and dumped them in her front yard.
Although Cereceda enjoys travel, nothing matches the return to Fort Myers Beach — not just the glint of sunshine on the water, but the community she's enjoyed there. “I’m linked to Fort Myers Beach like it’s an appendage of my body,” she says. “My whole life is wrapped up on that island.”
Hurricane Ian slammed out of the Gulf of Mexico and into Florida with 155-mile winds on Sept. 29 last year. It cut a path of destruction across the width and most of the length of the state before heading further north along the Atlantic coast. The worst effects, however, were felt in Southwest Florida, particularly barrier islands such as Sanibel, Pine Island and Fort Myers Beach, which is as flat as Kansas and only three-eighths of a mile across at its widest point. Lee County, which includes those islands, saw $35 billion worth of damage alone.
It was a life-changing event for everyone who lived there. Fort Myers Beach is marking the anniversary with all manner of events on Friday — prayers and speeches, rum punch toasts and a traditional Hawaiian “paddle out” to a somber sunset remembrance in the water. The first palm trees were planted just this week in Times Square, the devastated beachfront plaza where Cereceda lost two of her businesses. Friday will see the unveiling of a new Times Square Clock meant to symbolize hope and recovery.
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Read also
Florida, Other States, See Homeowners Insurance Costs Soar, Barron's / October 04, 2023
FDEM announces $13M for Fort Myers Beach recovery projects, WGCU / October 02, 2023
Hurricane Ian — One Year Later: Islands up and running as storm damages add up, Pine Island Eagle / October 03, 2023
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Clocks also represent and register the passage of time. A year is a long time, but for a community that took the kind of hit Fort Myers Beach experienced, it’s not nearly long enough for things to resemble anything like normal. After the storm, there was an initial period of relief and gratitude for survival. But soon the community entered into a long stage of uncertainty from which it has yet to emerge. “The one-year mark can be really hard psychologically,” says Bill Veach, a member of the town council. “People feel like they should be farther than they are, which is really hard.”
Fort Myers Beach and its neighbors have received enormous amounts of help from the federal government and the state, along with private charities. Lee County officials spent last month taking public input from residents about how to spend a $1.1 billion housing grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The county still has to prepare an action plan explaining how it will spend the money. It’s sobering to realize that New York is still dealing with an equivalent HUD grant more than a decade after Superstorm Sandy struck in 2012, says Lee County Commissioner Kevin Ruane.
Ruane heads a long-term planning task force for the county. He’s thinking in terms of where the area needs to be in 10 years, he says, with priorities including hardening water systems and other infrastructure. That kind of time frame has led many people to wonder whether they have the patience and wherewithal to rebuild. Their entire lives, in many cases, were reduced to piles of debris. Some don’t have adequate insurance to recapture what they had, while many retirees have concluded it was just too much to spend two or three years waiting and rebuilding. “I’m 73 — I’m a young buck, right, compared to some people,” says Jim O’Keefe, co-owner of a t-shirt shop in Matlacha, just north of Fort Myers Beach. “If I’m 80 years old, do I want to spend three years rebuilding? And then part of it is the question, are my friends still going to be here.”
