'This is Armageddon': Assessing Hurricane Ian's damage on Fort Myers Beach

As Urban Search and Rescue teams continued to survey Fort Myers Beach on Monday, residents were left to deal with the wreckage of their homes and lives less than a week after Hurricane Ian ravaged their community.

For some, like the dwellers of the RV parks on San Carlos Island, that meant sorting through their cherished belongings, trying to hold on to memories as they were forced to throw out their possessions, moldy from the floodwater.

For others, like Fort Myers Beach residents and evacuees, the chance to return home is off the table for now. The Lee County Emergency Operations Center has closed off the community while search and rescue missions are ongoing.

The Fort Myers Beach Fire District announced the decision Saturday, explaining that “no access will be permitted for the next week” for the safety of the crews trying to locate and help survivors.

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Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno reiterated this stance in a Monday news conference.

“We need to access what were roads and now rubble,” he said. “We need to be able to get that equipment in to make certain that we are not only rescuing but preserving crime scenes. I know there are a lot of people that are upset by that, but we have to make certain that we collectively as a team do it right the first time because we get one chance.”

There are eight search and rescue teams performing these critical operations on the hardest-hit areas of Southwest Florida.

“Every single day we’re making progress, and so for the folks that live on the beach and want to get to their home, I understand that, and I want to get them back as soon as possible,” Marceno said.

For Fort Myers Beach residents like Fred and Jean Kanehl, who were evacuated Monday, it was just one item on an endless list of pieces of their lives upended by the storm.

“It’s frustrating, it’s tiring, it’s time-consuming,” Fred Kanehl said. “You’d rather be playing golf. You’d rather be taking a walk, riding a bicycle, but you got to deal with it.”

The storm touched all parts of people’s lives, from shrimp boats piled up after being tossed around by Ian’s winds to children’s toys caked in mud from the flooding. Just putting one foot in front of the other can be overwhelming.

“It’s just the most horrible thing in the whole world really,” said San Carlos Island resident Cheryl Wiese.

'Like a war zone'

Wiese drove down from Ohio to the home where she has spent eight months of the year for the past 16 years and couldn’t believe what happened to what she described as her “happy place.”

“It’s like a war zone,” she said. “I couldn’t believe any of it.”

Sleeping in her car as she attempts to salvage what she can from her home, Wiese was worried that a recovery of this community would take years.

“I don’t think our island’s ever going to be the same again,” she said.

Patti Benson, a resident of a mobile home on San Carlos Island, reacts while recounting her story Monday, Oct. 3, 2022. She and her husband, Randy, and a friend, Jim McKnight, rode out the storm in the area and moved as the storm surge got worse.
Patti Benson, a resident of a mobile home on San Carlos Island, reacts while recounting her story Monday, Oct. 3, 2022. She and her husband, Randy, and a friend, Jim McKnight, rode out the storm in the area and moved as the storm surge got worse.

Patti Benson stayed behind, not far from her home. It was a fraught experience, seeing the water level rise where she was staying.

“It was rough,” she said, as someone who cannot swim. “It scared the living hell out of us.”

With a bandaged ankle, Benson struggled to formulate words for her situation.

“We just got to try to salvage what we can, just get through what we can,” she said.

Neighbor after neighbor had tales of traumatic experiences and memories lost in the wreckage. Looking forward can seem futile.

“There’s no possible way in the whole world that I can recover, and everything I worked for my whole life is gone,” Wiese said.

The strike of the storm seemed to catch everyone off guard.

“You know none of us was expecting this, and now we just got to get through it,” Benson said. “We got to survive.”

Watching as the storm hit

For many, the matter of survival was never more pronounced than during the storm’s peak.

Karen DeHays stayed in her house on San Carlos Island near Fort Myers Beach. She and her husband had left their home for many predicted storms in the past but decided to stick this one out.

“Once we realized we really should have left, it was too late to leave,” she said.

Karen DeHays, a resident of San Carlos Island near Fort Myers Beach, recounts her story of riding out Hurricane Ian in her home with her husband.
Karen DeHays, a resident of San Carlos Island near Fort Myers Beach, recounts her story of riding out Hurricane Ian in her home with her husband.

DeHays described the chairs of her kitchen island beginning to tilt, a sign the wood floor beneath her was taking on water. Eventually, she and her husband barricaded themselves in a back room with a floatation device and a paddleboard in case they needed to make a quick getaway.

“We were going to go out the back door if the house started to come down because we could just hear it breaking apart underneath,” she said. “The house was built in 1951, and it stayed.”

Charlie Whitehead left his home on San Carlos Island, where he raised his three children, in the nick of time.

It was a late decision to stay at a friend’s house in The Villages, but he returned as soon as he could at 5 a.m. the next day.

“Once I saw it, I knew that we’ll never be able to live in that again,” he said. “It looks like the inside of a washing machine. Everything was agitated around by the water. My fridge is laying on its back. Cabinets are pulled out from the wall. All the furniture’s jumbled around.”

On Monday, Whitehead was trying to see what he could spare from his home, such as his son’s childhood bed or his daughters’ purple graduation robes.

Mary Spicer, a mother of five from Wisconsin, came down on Thursday and has been emptying out her flooded home ever since.

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When she got there, their two refrigerators were floating outside, and there was a layer of mud on everything inside.

“Our kids’ Christmas presents, $4,000 worth of eBikes – all garbage,” Spicer said.

Her only comfort was that she could be the one to dispose of her own possessions. One evening, she sat in the bathtub scrubbing her child’s plastic toys with a toothbrush, trying to preserve them.

“This is where and how we chose to live,” Whitehead said. “They’ve been telling us since I moved down here that it wasn’t a question of if – it was a question of when.”

Still, the colossal scale of the damage was shocking even to those most prepared for it to happen.

“No one expected this – this is Armageddon,” Whitehead said. “This is crazy.”

The aftermath on Fort Myers Beach

There was a dream-like quality to this past week for Jean Kanehl. Like many on the barrier islands defiled by Ian, the Kanehls were cut off from the rest of the county.

“Those few days felt like forever, but it didn’t seem real,” she said.

The Kanehls, who have been full-time Floridians since 2018, stayed in their fourth-floor condo during the storm. They listened to weather reports and went back and forth, but eventually decided to hunker down.

They drove their cars out to a Publix, the highest point on the island, the night before the storm. Fred had recently installed impact glass on the windows.

Jean Kanehl, a resident of Fort Myers Beach, hugs Dave Johnston at a reunion spot on nearby San Carlos Island on Monday, Oct. 3, 2022. She and her husband, Fred, were evacuated Monday after riding out Hurricane Ian in their multi-story condo building.
Jean Kanehl, a resident of Fort Myers Beach, hugs Dave Johnston at a reunion spot on nearby San Carlos Island on Monday, Oct. 3, 2022. She and her husband, Fred, were evacuated Monday after riding out Hurricane Ian in their multi-story condo building.

“I felt very safe,” he said. “My wife, on the other hand, noises made her nervous. What she was seeing made her nervous.”

They watched as one of their cars that they left was consumed with water and the storm’s wild winds tossed boats around like they were nothing.

“I’m guessing the water level had to be 10 to 12 feet,” Fred Kanehl said.

Kanehl said he knew they would survive the storm. The biggest concern was what came after.

“My worry was the next day and who was going to be around, what’s our plan,” he said.

The following morning, they could assess the damage.

There was a 20-foot boat in their pool. There were bicycles everywhere. Picnic tables and gas grills fastened to the ground were pulled up. In their condo’s lobby, three walls were blown right off.

Neighbors worked together, holding meetings and sharing supplies. Christopher Dolce, a man from Weston, drove over in a pickup with hyperbaric chambers, ice, grills, 70 gallons of gas and a generator, which residents used to charge their phones.

“He became the central location,” Fred Kanehl said.

By the time the Kanehls left Monday, Dolce was still there, prepared to stay until he ran out of gas.

'We will rebuild'

The Kanehls connected with a friend, who is letting the couple stay with them in West Palm Beach as they try to reassemble their lives.

Jean Kanehl described it as “setting up your life all over again.”

Many older Floridians have important health care needs that must be met now that they’re displaced.

“That island’s full of retirees,” Fred Kanehl said.

The Kanehls are looking into apartments to rent while still paying a mortgage and taxes on a home they can’t live in.

Members of an Urban Search and Rescue team from Indiana move through a San Carlos Island mobile home park near Fort Myers Beach on Monday, Oct. 3, 2022.
Members of an Urban Search and Rescue team from Indiana move through a San Carlos Island mobile home park near Fort Myers Beach on Monday, Oct. 3, 2022.

“I’m not going to feel too bad for us – we’re all dealing with this,” Fred Kanehl said. “It’s not like we got picked on. We’re just a number right now.”

Many have adopted the mindset to forge ahead amid the destruction and the uncertainty. DeHays is planning to rebuild her property.

“My husband’s family has been in this house for 70 years,” she said. “It’s going to be torn down, but we will rebuild.”

For some, it’s too difficult to even think that far ahead.

“I plan on having a beer at about 4 o’clock,” Whitehead said. “I don’t know what to do beyond that.”

Readers can follow News-Press sports reporter Dustin Levy on Twitter: @DustinBLevy.

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Hurricane Ian: Fort Myers Beach residents grapple with what's next