'Heartbreaking': Northeast Ohio firefighters at the scene of Ian devastation in Florida

Four Summit County firefighters are among Northeast Ohioans on the ground in Lee County, Florida, helping residents in an area ravaged by Hurricane Ian and the site of a visit from President Joe Biden and Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday.

The firefighters are part of the Ohio Task Force One team of 84 emergency response professionals from Ohio and surrounding states working through damaged areas in the county. Last week, Fort Myers Beach, a Lee County town of about 5,500 hundred residents, became the focal point of news coverage on Hurricane Ian, replete with images of homes leveled in the island community.

More:'Fort Myers Beach is gone': Waterfront workers recount Hurricane Ian devastation

In a phone interview Tuesday, Green Fire Department Chief Jeff Funai described a sometimes-surreal landscape, with hordes of volunteers roaming devastated areas in an effort to help.

"I have been out with a search group walking through neighborhoods door-to-door," Funai said. "I've been to houses that had a few inches [of water] and I've been to houses that had 7½ feet in them."

More:Tallmadge, New Franklin firefighters join Ohio team to help with Tropical Storm Ian

It's Funai's first assignment as a member of Task Force One, and he said it brings home the stark reality of what is seen in news reports. He trained as an planning section chief and has been with OTF-1 about a year.

"You know what it's going to look like," he said, "(But) it is strange to be there in person."

Strange, for example, in the randomly scattered fleet of boats littering the areas he's seen.

"There are boats everywhere," he said. "Your boat is not where you left it: It's in somebody's yard or somebody's tree."

Funai said some residents are returning to the devastated areas as services are repaired and reestablished, but it's still early in the process of recovery.

"In the parts of the neighborhoods I was in, it was still pretty light on those returning," he said. "A rough guess — 1 in 5. Those people had amazingly high spirits. (They are) very resilient and counting their blessings."

Visit from president and governor

Biden and DeSantis toured parts of Lee County, promising continued assistance to residents and calling attention both to the damage in Lee County and the progress of recovery efforts. Biden, in a speech in Fort Myers, took the opportunity to address the effects of climate change. In a response to a question from the media, the president said the world is changing.

"...(F)irst of all, the biggest thing the governor has done and so many others have done — they’ve recognized there’s a thing called global warming," he said. "The world is changing. It’s changing."

Biden said 4 million meals and millions of bottles of water had already been distributed by FEMA in its response to Hurricane Ian.

In a texted response Thursday, Funai said Biden and DeSantis had not visited OTF-1's base of operations, which OTF-1 is sharing with a Texas task force. The Green police chief said there are at least five such task forces in the county.

Lots of people from Ohio, the Midwest

Funai said that the residents who have returned are cleaning up from the destruction.

"It's heartbreaking for the people living there," he said. "They are gathering up their things and hauling [them] away in the trash."

Funai said the area OTF-1 is working in is populated by a surprising amount of Ohioans.

"This particular area of Florida is loaded with people from the Midwest," he said.

The transplants include retired police and fire personnel, some who have visited the OTF-1 base and encountered members they know or have met before, he said.

"(They are) old friends that they have worked with that stopped by," he said.

Funai said that en route to OTF-1's assignment, the group saw hordes of utility workers making their way south to devastated areas.

"As we were driving here there was just convoy after convoy of utility trucks," he said.

A week after Ian struck Lee County, the services they were bringing remained in dire need.

"The people here are desperate for those of type of things," he said. "They are in short supply."

Funai is on-scene with Green Fire Department Capt. Josh Compton, a veteran of multiple OTF-1 deployments, Tallmadge Fire Department Battalion Chief Andy Miller and New Franklin fire medic Rich Huggins.

'That could be my grandma'

Since its deployment to Lee County, OTF-1 has assisted or evacuated 125 residents, ranging from simple tasks to rescues from dangerous situations, said Chris O'Connor, public information officer for the task force. It's also examined thousands of structures in Sarasota and Lee counties, she said Thursday.

More:'Like a combat zone': Local firefighters recount efforts at collapsed high-rise in Florida

"They have literally walked to and searched 4,200 structures," she said.

O'Connor said OTF-1 members dived in on their first day in Lee County.

"Three of those were active rescues on the first day our team was there," she said. "They had an elderly woman they helped out the other day. My heart was like, that could be my grandma."

Funai said he's grateful to Green residents for the chance to help out natural disaster victims half the country away. He said Green residents can be proud of their reach extending to residents of south Florida.

"[We are] blessed to work for a department that gives us an opportunity to do this," he said "We're blessed to be in a city that has an administration that supports this."

He said residents he has encountered and heard about have been appreciative of what OTF-1 is doing to help.

"They wish that they could do something for us," he said.

Leave a message for Alan Ashworth at 330-996-3859 or email him at aashworth@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @newsalanbeaconj.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: 'Heartbreaking': Summit County firefighters at the scene of Ian damage