Wind blew soaking drizzle sideways as we drove across the Sanibel Island causeway, heading east to safety ahead of the storm.
Hurricane Ian, which would become a Category 5 storm with 160-mph winds and 15-foot storm surge, had Sanibel, Fort Myers Beach, and the surrounding area of Southwest Florida in its sights for a direct hit.
Ian drowned the island, knocked out the causeway, and deposited a thick coat of slippery toxic black mud as the water receded. The storm left the island without power, water, or sewer service. Concrete utility poles were snapped like bread sticks. Black mold began to grow almost immediately.
My wife, Susan, and I fled the hurricane with a car, two suitcases, our two dogs (a Belgian Malinois and a German Shepherd), and a supply of dog food. Left behind in our one-story home were the rest of our possessions, including the computer where I was writing my book. Few of those possessions survived Ian, only items stored up high. The computer was not one of them.
Luckily, my manuscript was safely tucked away in the cloud.
After the storm, the only way on and off the island initially was by boat. For a fee, fishing charter captains ferried homeowners to and from Sanibel to assess the damage, salvage what they could, shovel out the mud, tear out the soaked drywall, cart destroyed possessions to the side of the road, and begin to remediate the damage. The captains, who lost their fishing charter businesses in the hurricane, faced enormous risks on these trips because the storm carved new channels in the floor of the Gulf of Mexico and underwater debris was everywhere. The captains also had to avoid running aground when they dropped off homeowners in water shallow enough for them to wade ashore, carrying food, water, and whatever essential tools they could manage.
On my first trip after the storm, I was afraid I’d break off the key in the front door because the stormwater and mud had corroded and clogged the lock. In my backpack was a can of lubricant. I finally turned the lock after several tries. Inside the home was a horror scene. The smell was overpowering. A small dead fish lay in the mud next to a sopping-wet sofa. The laminate floor in the living room and kitchen had been dislodged. A large slab rested on the kitchen counter, pocked with what looked like cotton balls. I soon realized that these “cotton balls” were chunks of human feces coated in white mold. The bathroom toilets looked like they had exploded.
On my last trip to the island by boat before temporary repairs reopened the causeway, rough seas pushed the boat sideways, and it began to take on water. Workers I had hired to help remediate our home jumped out and pushed the boat to safety before it sank. We saw several other boats whose owners weren’t as fortunate.
Before we purchased a home on the Northern Neck of Virginia seven months after the storm, we lived with the dogs in a hotel room, two rental houses, and a relative’s home. We sold the skeleton of our Sanibel home, emptied of even the cabinets and sinks, stripped to the studs, cleaned, sanitized, and sprayed for mold.
We moved into the new home with a pod of salvaged possessions. On moving day, we sat in the living room on our only chairs, a pair of tall plastic Adirondacks purchased from the previous owners.
A few months later, I bought a new computer and resumed work on the book.
In hindsight, we were lucky. We escaped the disaster and put our lives back together. Others in Southwest Florida are still trying.
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