FL - Water Quality Report: Life after Hurricane Ian

WATER QUALITY REPORT FOR OCT. 1, 2023

Every destructive hurricane must hit 111 mph to be considered a “major” tropical cyclone and, of course, the storms spin counter-clockwise in our part of the world. Otherwise, each hurricane is different.

Some do most of their damage due to the winds. Others due to its rainfall. Others due to how large or small it is. How fast or slow it's moving. And still others it's the deep, churning storm surge is the wrecking ball of the storm.

The latter was the case with Hurricane Ian, which produced a wall of water pushed up by a combination of meteorological and land-shape factors 15 feet or higher in places. Ian was a “storm surge” storm.

None of us here that day – the next day, the next week, the next month – will ever forget what the storm meant to each one of us.

Due to the crazy nature of, well, nature, for some near Cape Coral last year’s Hurricane Ian was a party. Cell phone video camera footage shows some folks watching the water in their canal out back rise four or five feet, a few tree limbs blow by, but other than a lack of power, a party it remained.

Too bad it wasn’t that way for everyone, because far too many people were fighting for their lives at the very same time.

Or they were watching their homes float away.

Or soon after the storm returning to find their homes intact, but a high-water mark five feet up the interior wall and everything they owned ruined. TVs, blankets, couches, dishes, socks, kitchen chairs, dog dishes, the washer and dryer – all of it caked in a muddy mixture of canal bottom, dirt, and road debris washed about by the slow-moving storm.

For most of us the destruction we witnessed will never leave our minds. I have chased hurricanes throughout Florida for 20 years, from Key West to Jacksonville to Pensacola, but I never had one land quite literally in my front yard.

Have you ever seen those pictures taken after a hurricane evacuation notice was issued, where all three lanes of a highway heading away from the shoreline are packed with evacuees in cars? They are moving at a snail’s pace to get away from the impending destruction forecast to hit their coast in mere hours, fearing for their lives.

There’s always that one car going in the other direction on a completely open highway, heading toward where the storm is going to hit. That was probably me …
… or a journalist like me heading to where the year’s biggest story is going to unfold to capture it first-hand.

After Ian, and not taking my profession into account, the destruction was mind-numbing and horrible. The large number of deaths is even more catastrophic, and so very sad. The piles of debris along both sides of the road I live on in South Cape Coral were filled ten feet high with what, yesterday, were my neighbors’ prized possessions.

However, as a weather-focused journalist looking at the raw power of Ian and what it did what I saw was amazing, fascinating, incredible, and yet it all made me feel very, very small all at the same time.

For most of us the destruction we witnessed will never leave our minds. I have chased hurricanes throughout Florida for 20 years, from Key West to Jacksonville to Pensacola, but I never had one land quite literally in my front yard

Each of us working at WGCU has our own recollections of what impacted us most, what we learned about big hurricanes, or what we saw in people’s resilience after the disaster up until this very day.

Under the tutelage of Emmy Award-winning Pam James, our executive producer, the entire staff created a documentary that just aired on PBS. Each of us discusses a facet of Ian that hit home with us, even as the storm literally hit many of our homes.

“After Ian” was a true labor of love showing some of what the hurricane taught each of us about storm surge, the heartfelt emotions of the 911 operators taking all those calls, and some of the special people who went through Ian and their resiliency and commitment to stay and rebuild. Watch it here.

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