'Glad to be alive': Punta Gorda mobile home park decimated. One resident, 81, huddled in closet to ride out storm

PUNTA GORDA, Fla. — Susan DiGregorio crawled into her guest room closet, pulled a giant teddy bear over her body and began to pray.

The 81-year-old resident of Hurricane Ian’s ground zero had plans to evacuate with a neighbor from Bay Palms Mobile Home Park, just east of downtown Punta Gorda. But he arrived the day they were supposed to leave and told her he had come down with COVID-19.

To DiGregorio, catching the virus would be a death sentence at her age. So she stayed, taking cover in the closet, listening to the screams of ripping aluminum as her roof came off and making peace with a death that never came.

“I’m glad to be alive,” she said. “I’m glad to see the sun. I’m glad to hear the birds that made it through the storm.”

As Hurricane Ian turned south in its destructive trek toward Florida, Punta Gorda, a city of about 20,000 people on the Peace River in Charlotte County, ended up directly in its path. On Thursday, residents had begun to venture out to survey the damage: uprooted palm trees that snatched power lines on the way down, patches of shingles torn from roofs, enough debris — scattered seemingly everywhere — that residents knew they’d be clearing it out for months.

There were greater tragedies, too. Twelve people died in Charlotte County, Florida Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said Friday, although officials were still trying to confirm that number.

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While some lower-lying roads were still flooded, the city didn’t appear as inundated by storm surge as cities and beach towns further south, such as Sanibel Island, Fort Myers Beach and downtown Fort Myers.

“They’re in water. They’re trying to save lives right now,” said Loraine Lynch, a resident and board member of Bay Palms who also owns 10 rental properties in Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte. “We’re trying to save what we can and rebuild.”

But it was clear, especially at Bay Palms, that Ian’s Category 4 winds tore through the city with a rare ferocity. In the park, mangled pieces of siding littered the roads and yards. Downed power lines criss-crossed the landscape. At one home, an entire wall was gone, revealing the brown leather couches inside.

With more than half of the residents snowbirds, it makes the situation more difficult

Complicating the situation was that, according to Lynch, about 80% of residents are snowbirds, scattered in the Midwest and Canada. Lynch and other permanent residents were inundated with messages asking them for photos and reports from their homes.

“I’ve been sending photos on Facebook,” said resident Lisa Vasquez, 65. “People are crying.”

Vasquez got lucky. Her mobile home was intact, which she attributes to its old age and good bones; it also survived 2004’s Hurricane Charley. The most damaged homes, she said, were the newer ones.

Still, Vasquez wasn’t going to try her luck. She and her chihuahua, London, evacuated east, first to Moore Haven, just west of Lake Okeechobee, then to Clewiston a little farther south. All the hotels were booked, but she found an evacuee camp of sorts in a Walmart parking lot, where hundreds of people had parked their cars and RVs to ride out the storm.

She joined them in her red 2021 Toyota Sienna hybrid, set up a massive body pillow on the ground in the back seat and a food bowl for London, and hunkered down. She could feel the van retching back and forth as, even 80 miles from the coast, Ian’s winds battered the parking lot.

Lynch helped evacuate four elderly women from the park and stayed with them at a condo in Miami. She thought everyone had left, so she was shocked to find DiGregorio in her home and was even more surprised to learn she’d stayed.

It was a harrowing 24 hours for DiGregorio, who’s lived in Punta Gorda for 40 years. Among the most devastating aspects of Ian were its size — massive enough to cover nearly the entire state — and speed — about as slow as a leisurely bike ride. DiGregorio felt every minute of it.

Conditions began to worsen on Wednesday morning, so she packed up her important documents and tried to take her motorized scooter to the sturdier park clubhouse. Almost as soon as she started, it hit muck and fell into a ditch, so she walked the rest of the way, only to find out the clubhouse was locked.

Then, she called 911 multiple times, but on the third try an operator told her emergency vehicles had been taken off the road, DiGregorio said. She was on her own.

Unable to lift a mattress, she found something that might save her from Hurricane Ian -- a giant teddy bear

Back at her mobile home, she recalled reading somewhere to cover your body and head with a mattress to protect yourself from flying debris. She said she couldn’t lift a mattress on her own, so she grabbed the teddy bear she'd recently bought from Aldi "because it was just so damn cute!" and slung it over her body.

“I did everything I could to protect myself,” she said.

All night, she prayed and let the calm that comes with shock lull her in and out of sleep. She emerged Thursday morning to find that her roof had been torn off and water had leaked through parts of the ceiling. Her screen porch was caved in, her tool shed decimated, and her driveway littered with debris. With a fixed income, DiGregorio couldn’t afford home or flood insurance, so she’s unsure of her next steps.

By Friday, she said, she had been able to put in a Federal Emergency Management Agency application over the phone, and neighbors were helping her relocate herself and her pets: a cockatiel named Teal, a parrotlet named Chloe, and two cats, Skittles and Ted.

Still, amid the chaos and devastation, she was grateful to be alive. And perhaps most surprising of all was the motorized scooter. A neighbor retrieved it from the ditch, and, against all odds after its night in the muck, it still worked.

Kathryn Varn is statewide enterprise reporter for the Gannett/USA Today Network - Florida. You can reach her at kvarn@gannett.com or (727) 238-5315.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Hurricane Ian decimated Punta Gorda, Charlotte County mobile home park