Changed by storm: Hurricane Ian left water-logged lives in Central Florida

One year after Hurricane Ian drowned homes and businesses, displacing residents, some are still living in disarray and disrepair while waiting for government aid and insurance companies to help them restore order to their structures and lives.

Ian, which made landfall Sept. 28 in Lee County as a Category 4 hurricane, had weakened to a tropical storm by the next day when it arrived in Central Florida, but its drenching rains caused millions in damages.

In Seminole County, 14 residents continue to live in trailers as they wait now more than a year to restore their damaged homes with help from federal Small Business Administration loans. Many of those repairs have been stalled because of shortages in the supply-chain of building materials, according to county officials, who helped process the loans.

Gerry Block watched in horror a year ago as Hurricane Ian rolled through Central Florida and filled his home in Geneva with floodwaters.

Since then, Block has been living in a neighbor’s barn as he waits for grant money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help him rebuild his destroyed house at a higher elevation on the same spot near the St. Johns River.

But last month, Block was told by FEMA that it may still be another year before he sees any funding.

“I signed more papers, and I’m still waiting,” said Block, who has lived in east Seminole County for more than three decades. “I’m trying to take it one day at a time. … But it’s nice out here. I figure it’s worth the wait.”

Block is among a dozen homeowners in Seminole County waiting on their FEMA grants to rebuild and elevate their homes damaged by Ian.

A few homes waiting to be elevated are near the Spring Oaks neighborhood, a low-lying area along the Little Wekiva Area in Altamonte Springs, which commonly floods after large rain events.

Block rejected an offer to sell his property to the government, level the house and declare the land a flood zone, which would have prevented any structure from ever being built there again.

Owners of two homes along Whitcomb Drive on the western side of Lake Harney that were severely flooded and damaged by Ian have accepted those offers. Those structures will soon be leveled.

Joel Martin, owner of The Black Hammock attraction on the southern shore of Lake Jesup, is back in business after it took almost three months for the floodwaters to recede and reopen last year.

County officials said more than 24 inches of rain fell in that area of east Seminole.

Of the two outdoor bars, one of them was completely destroyed. Martin is now in the process of getting it rebuilt at a higher elevation. His other bar was spared from the flooding because it was elevated after Hurricane Irma in 2017.

“This was a bad one,” Martin said about the large amount of rain from Ian. “I’ve had this place for 25 years. And this was the worst we’ve seen.”

A year after Ian, renters like those flooded at Good Samaritan village have little protection

But Martin is also grateful.

“You cannot go against Mother Nature,” he said. “Fortunately, no one died. We cannot complain after you see what happened in Fort Myers and they’re still rebuilding.”

Alan Harris, Seminole’s director of emergency management, said Ian — like every other storm — was a learning lesson on how to improve the county’s emergency response.

For example, Seminole plans to upgrade its equipment and use more drones in the future to avoid relying on helicopters, which are expensive, to survey damage and assist with rescues.

In many cases “they are a better and cheaper option,” Harris said about drones.

The county also is working with the city of Sanford to deploy “tiger dams” — or portable dams that can be quickly filled with water — around the road into Marina Isle and near HCA Florida Lake Monroe hospital.

Ian and Tropical Storm Nicole several weeks later caused major flooding issues in downtown Sanford, particularly shutting off the access road to Marina Isle and leading businesses to shut down. An assisted living facility at Marina Island was evacuated because emergency officials were concerned about accessing the facility during an emergency.

“We do not want to evacuate people if we don’t have to,” Harris said. “So we’re working on ways to keep that facility completely open by working with Sanford to keep the roadway open.”

Water from Lake Monroe flowed over West Seminole Boulevard and flooded the hospital’s parking lot in the days after Ian. Harris said the tiger dams and backflow preventers will be used in that area to prevent future flooding.

A year later, Volusia rebuilds but still shows scars from hurricanes Ian, Nicole

Orange County

In Orange County, flooding was a widespread problem, too, affecting a dozen neighborhoods.

Rain gauges at Orlando International Airport collected nearly 2 feet of rain in September 2022 — and the National Weather Service blamed more than half of that, 13.2 inches, on Ian.

FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program paid $58.2 million to about 850 policyholders in Orange County, agency spokesperson Alberto Pillot said in an email outlining FEMA’s work in Ian’s aftermath.

He said the agency also paid $73.6 million to 39,700 homeowners and renters for temporary housing, basic home repairs and other needs not covered by insurance like personal property replacement.

For instance, the agency paid to replace the refrigerator and other kitchen appliances lost in the waist-high flood waters that swamped Jan’et Buford-Johnson’s home on Ronnie Circle in Orlo Vista.

While flooding was common in low-lying Orlo Vista, it was new to other neighborhoods.

Flood waters burst through a bedroom wall of the ground-floor apartment at Cypress Landing near Oak Ridge High School that Omayra Ramos shared with her mother, Yolanda Rios, and destroyed their personal belongings, including Ramos’ power wheelchair and other medical devices.

Like many low-income renters, Ramos and her mom had trouble finding a new home.

They ping-ponged between her mother’s boyfriend’s car and two motels before getting a federally subsidized apartment where, Ramos said, gunfire is too common. They’ve decided to head north to live with family in Pennsylvania, where they may face ice storms but probably not hurricanes.

“I was not going to feel safe here again,” said Ramos, 39, recalling how she had to be lifted out of her power wheelchair, which stopped functioning in the waist-deep water, and carried to higher, drier ground.

Orange County Property Appraiser Amy Mercado said Ian caused about $206 million in damage to properties, including about 1,230 homes incurring damages, totaling more than $46 million.

The county, awarded $219.7 million in disaster-recovery aid from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, will host eight “listening sessions” this month to determine how best to spend the money.

“These dollars are intended to help communities in the hardest-hit areas recover from damage left behind from Hurricane Ian,” Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said. “Before we can allocate the funds and provide comprehensive programming, we must first go to our community and understand the most pressing unmet needs.”

The county has created an online survey for the public to weigh in on suggested uses for the funding, which has some income-eligible restrictions.