Global Courant 2023-05-30 18:46:03
Eight months ago, Chef Michael Cellura had a job at a restaurant and had just moved into a fancy new RV on Fort Myers Beach. Now, after Hurricane Ian wiped all that out, he lives in his older Infiniti sedan with a 15-year-old long-haired Chihuahua named Ginger.
Like hundreds of others, Cellura was left homeless after the Category 5 hurricane devastated the barrier island last September with fierce winds and a storm surge as high as 15 feet. Like many, he has trouble handling insurance payouts, understanding federal and state bureaucracy, and finding a place to shower.
“There are many of us who are displaced. They have nowhere to go,” said Cellura, 58, in a recent interview, sitting next to his car in a commercial parking lot along with other survivors of the storm, housed in recreational vehicles, a converted school. bus, even a sea container. “There are a lot of homeless people here, a lot of people living in tents, a lot of people who are struggling.”
The recovery is far from complete in hard-hit Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel and Pine Island, with this year’s Atlantic hurricane season officially starting June 1. , five to nine become hurricanes and one to four become major hurricanes with winds exceeding 110 mph.
Another weather pattern that could stifle Atlantic storms is the El Nino warming expected in the Pacific this year, experts say. Still, increasingly warming waters in the Atlantic basin, fueled by climate change, could offset the El Nino effect, scientists say.
There are heaps of debris everywhere in southwest Florida. Demolition and construction work is underway throughout the region. Trucks filled with sand rumble to refresh the eroded beaches. Empty concrete slabs reveal where buildings, many of which were once charming, decades-old structures that gave the cities their relaxed beach feel, were washed away or demolished.
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Some people, like Fort Myers Beach resident Jacquelyn Velazquez, live in RVs or tents on their property while waiting for sluggish insurance checks or building permits to restore their lives.
“It’s, you know, it’s a snap. Your life will never be the same again,” she said beside her state-provided RV. “It’s not the things you lose. It’s just trying to get back to normal.”
Ian claimed more than 156 lives in the US, the vast majority in Florida, according to a comprehensive NOAA report on the hurricane. In hard-hit Lee County — the location of Fort Myers Beach and the other coastal towns — 36 people died from drowning in a storm surge and more than 52,000 buildings were damaged, including more than 19,000 destroyed or severely damaged, a NOAA survey found. report.
Even with state and federal aid, the scale of the disaster has overwhelmed these small towns that have been unwilling to deal with so many problems at once, said Chris Holley, former interim city manager of Fort Myers Beach.
Jacquelyn, left, and Timothy Velazquez spend time on the back porch of their home, which flooded on May 24, 2023 during Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers Beach, Florida. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
“Probably the biggest challenge is the madness of the debris removal process. We’ll be at it for another six months,” Holley said. “Permits are a huge, huge problem for a small town. The staff just couldn’t handle it.”
Then there are battles with insurance companies and how to get state and federal aid, which run into the billions of dollars. Robert Burton and his partner Cindy Lewis, both 71 and from Ohio, whose mobile home was destroyed by a storm surge, lived with friends and family for months until a small apartment finally became available through the Federal Emergency Management Agency. They can stay there until March 2024 while looking for a new home.
Their mobile home park off the causeway to Sanibel is a ghost town, full of flooded homes soon to be demolished, many of them with broken furniture in them, clothes still in closets, art still on the walls. Most houses had at least a meter of water inside.
“No one has a house. That park will not be reopened as a residential community,” Lewis said. “So everyone lost.”
The State Office of Insurance Regulation estimated Ian’s total insured loss in Florida at nearly $14 billion, with more than 143,000 claims outstanding without payment or claims paid but not fully settled as of March 9.
With so many people in limbo, places like the badly damaged Beach Baptist Church in Fort Myers Beach provide a lifeline, with a food supply, hot lunch stand, showers, and even laundry facilities for all to use. Pastor Shawn Critser said about 1,200 families a month are helped at the church through donated goods.
“We’re not running emergency power right now. We’re in disaster recovery mode,” Critser said. “We want to see this continue. We want to be constantly present.”
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In nearby Sanibel, the ongoing damage isn’t as widespread, though many businesses remain closed while being repaired and debris is everywhere. Seven local stores have relocated to a mainland mall in Fort Myers, hoping to continue operating pending insurance payouts, building permits or both before returning to the island.
They call themselves the “Sanibel Seven,” says Rebecca Binkowski, owner of MacIntosh Books and Paper, which has been a fixture in Sanibel since 1960. She said her store had no flood insurance and lost about $100,000 worth of books and furniture in the storm.
“The fact is we can get our businesses up and running again, but without hotels to house people, without our community going back, it’s going to be hard to do business,” she said. “You hope this is still a strong community.”
Still, many survivors have a sense of hope for the future, even if it looks very different.
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Cellura, the chef who lives in his car, has a new job at a different location of the Nauti Parrot restaurant on the mainland. The insurance only paid off the outstanding loan amount on his destroyed RV and he was ineligible for FEMA aid, leaving him with virtually nothing to start over and apartment rents rising rapidly.
But after 22 years on the island, he doesn’t give up.
“I believe it will be ok. I am strong. I am a survivor,” he said. “Every day I wake up is another day to just get on with it and make things better.”
