Fort Myers woman fleeing Hurricane Ian finds refuge in Lakeland

LAKELAND — Tiffany Ketchmark stood in the front yard of her father’s home on West Highland Street as crews toiled a short distance away to replace a power pole wrecked by the winds from Hurricane Ian.

But Ketchmark’s thoughts remained in Fort Myers, her home of five years. She said flooding from the hurricane ruined her apartment after she evacuated Wednesday with her three children, and now she doesn’t know where she will next reside.

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As she spoke Friday afternoon, Ketchmark checked her cell phone for images of the devastation in Fort Myers, shaking her head grimly.

Ketchmark lived in Lakeland for five years before moving to Fort Myers. Her father, Dale Ketchmark, was visiting her as the storm approached, and she left for Lakeland on Wednesday afternoon with her son, Jayden, 9, and her daughters, Jade, 4, and Jailyn, 3.

Dale Ketchmark had planned to stay in the apartment throughout the hurricane, but his daughter persuaded him to leave.

“The storm started picking up and they called me at 11 o’clock at night (Wednesday), said they’re too nervous about me not being there, so I left at 11 that night,” Dale said.

Tiffany said she lived in a community with some homes on canals that lead to San Carlos Bay

“My neighbors called late that night freaking out,” Ketchmark said. “They’re my upstairs neighbors, and there was water all the way up past my apartment. They were scared of it getting to their apartment and had nowhere to go, nowhere higher up.”

Ketchmark said she communicated with her neighbor through FaceTime throughout the ordeal, learning that the rising water stopped just short of the second floor.

Ketchmark, 31, returned to Fort Myers on Thursday and waded through waist-deep water to reach her apartment and help her neighbor and the woman’s children evacuate. She returned to search for a mother and daughter also living in the apartment complex but could not find them. As of Friday afternoon, Ketchmark didn’t know if those neighbors had survived.

She joined a search party that moved through the apartment community, shouted out for anyone who might need help. She said they helped six people flee the flooded homes. The group ferried an elderly, disabled woman to safety on a bicycle they pushed through the water.

Asked about her apartment, Ketchmark said it was “trashed.”

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“The refrigerator was flipped upside down,” she said. “Beds were everywhere. I had shoes on my counter. It was destroyed.”

Ketchmark said she had talked to her insurance company on Friday. She holds two jobs at restaurants in Fort Myers and would like to return.

“If I go back, I don’t have anywhere to stay and I don’t have anything,” she said. “But I do have my jobs to go back to, so I probably will go back and try to get temporary housing until we figure out if I’m going to get another place or my place can be fixed.”

Ketchmark said the flooding from Hurricane Ian destroyed keepsakes that cannot be replaced, including some from her mother, who died when Tiffany was nine years old.

“I actually just had my dad bring a box up to me, and I lost everything in that,” she said. “So that’s pretty tough.”

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on Twitter @garywhite13.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Her home 'trashed,' Hurricane Ian refugee shelters in Lakeland