After Ian: Thousands of Sarasota County residents remain stranded; local groups offer hope

Returning to her South Venice home after Hurricane Ian, Lindsay Weishaar thought the worst was over.

Tired and wrung-out, still sick with COVID-19, Lindsay looked up with relief to see the house mostly intact as her husband pulled in front.

Inside, the carpets were squishy, the floors still damp from flooding.

To Lindsay – who had grown up in a stilt home near Georgia’s coast, unfamiliar with the impact of standing water – it seemed they had dodged a bullet.

“It looks like you just clean it up and move on,” said Lindsay, a nurse at Sarasota Memorial Hospital.

Lindsay Weishaar, a nurse at SMH, and her husband Doug and their two kids, Lilly, 2, Piper, 5, and their eighteen-year-old wonder dog Sandy. They are still living in a state-provided camper behind their house, which was flooded six-months ago during Hurricane Ian.
Lindsay Weishaar, a nurse at SMH, and her husband Doug and their two kids, Lilly, 2, Piper, 5, and their eighteen-year-old wonder dog Sandy. They are still living in a state-provided camper behind their house, which was flooded six-months ago during Hurricane Ian.

What’s more, she knew, the family had homeowner’s insurance – plus flood. And FEMA was pulling into town.

What Lindsay, 43, could not imagine in those first soggy hours of late September following an exhausting evacuation was that their nightmare was only about to begin.

While mold’s black tentacles quickly spread along the baseboards and inner walls, help from FEMA and insurance was mind-numbingly slow.

Half a year later, Lindsay and her husband and kids are still not back in their house – instead, sleeping in a state-provided camper in the backyard – and over $130,000 in debt.

“All of it was just terrible,” Lindsay said. “We have been living in crisis mode all the time.”

They are not alone.

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Thousands stranded

As the region hits the six-month anniversary of Ian’s deadly rampage across Southwest Florida, hundreds if not thousands of local families are awaiting or have been denied relief from insurance or FEMA – many forced to live in campers or their cars.

But for some residents, help may be on the way, say community leaders.

One enormous such effort underway is that of the Sarasota County Long Term Recovery Group, spearheaded by United Way of South Sarasota County.

The group, meeting since December, is organizing an army of community volunteers, said Barbara Cruz, president and CEO of United Way SSC and board chair of the recovery group.

The idea is to divide volunteers from area nonprofits and faith-based communities into committees and case management teams ahead of a massive two-week needs assessment in May, Cruz added.

During the assessment, storm survivors in Sarasota County can come in and meet one-on-one with members from World Renew Disaster Response Services, she said.

They will talk about their storm experience and ongoing needs not covered by FEMA or insurance – from muck work to drywall tear-out to replacing flooded cars. Cruz estimates that at least 1,500 storm survivor households have fallen between the cracks in Sarasota County and will participate.

“Whatever the needs are, the community residents will be able to speak to this group, and they will document the information and submit it to us in a report,” Cruz said. “This is pretty amazing, and it gives us a target to go after funders to take care of these things.”

What’s more, the assessment will help funnel survivors to the case management teams that will be standing by. Those teams will respond by sending trained volunteer workers to survivors' houses to help with everything from ongoing clean-up to drywall repair, painting and other assistance.

“We will literally divvy up the cases to the managers and begin the process of working with clients to a point to make them whole or whole in their new reality,” Cruz said.  “This is what will help us drive the response and how we are going to be able to commit resources to helping these folks.”

But support will be more than just material, Cruz added.

Teams are also being organized to handle survivors' mental health and spiritual care needs, addressing toxic levels of stress accumulated in the aftermath of the storm, she said.

Storm survivors will be referred to volunteer mental health providers and other resources to help them cope.

“Now that the dust is settling and the reality settling in, mental health is becoming more prevalent and needed,” Cruz said.

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More groups mobilize for long-term recovery

By targeting human services programs, other local foundations are also hoping to lift struggling families for whom the storm exacerbated ongoing community crises and gaps in services.

The Community Foundation of Sarasota County will seek to bolster the region's long-term recovery groups when it starts receiving grant applications in April for the $5 million raised with The Patterson Foundation for the Suncoast Disaster Recovery Fund.

It also will concentrate on collaborative and innovative approaches by nonprofits in the areas of mental health, housing, education, youth and child care services for Sarasota, Manatee, DeSoto and Charlotte counties, said Kirsten Russell, vice president of community impact.

"We've seen the hurricane amplify existing gaps and challenges," she said. "I think the hope is that this is an opportunity to address the larger issues, not just fix the immediate need but perhaps we fix the underlying causes."

The Gulf Coast Community Foundation also has focused on immediate needs such as food, water, salary and rental assistance as well as mental, emotional and child care support. Its more than $3 million in 45 recovery relief grants went to dozens of human services agencies – from All Faiths Food Bank and YMCA of Southwest Florida to the Tidewell Foundation and Centerstone of Florida.

Since those grants, Gulf Coast has raised several hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional funds and is considering more requests based on community need, said Jon Thaxton, senior vice president for community leadership.

Those needs, he added, are likely to be ongoing and felt for years, particularly by working families, who have absorbed the brunt of recent "compounded disasters" – from the pandemic to the affordable housing crisis and now Hurricane Ian.

While donors and philanthropists rally to help families get back on their feet, Thaxton said, it remains critical that local governments like the Sarasota County Commission do not pull the rug out from existing, baseline support for mental health and human services programs – as it is considering doing in coming weeks.

“We have people bleeding on the battlefields,” he said.

The struggle of recovery

For Lindsay, the stress has already taken a toll.

She can’t sleep and has lost 35 pounds. She struggles with focus and patience.

“Your mind is just constantly going,” she said. “The anxiety of trying to make the best of worst decisions is really hard.”

Despite immediately filing insurance and FEMA claims right after the storm, she and her husband, Doug, waited weeks for replies.

Eventually, FEMA denied a trailer.

The Weishaar's are still living in a state-provided camper behind their house, which was flooded six-months ago during Hurricane Ian.
The Weishaar's are still living in a state-provided camper behind their house, which was flooded six-months ago during Hurricane Ian.

“I was constantly knocking on doors and just getting nowhere,” she said. “It left us absolutely drowning and vulnerable.”

As mold took over their home, they moved nine times, bouncing between the homes of friends and family. Finally, they found a temporary rental for $2,500 a month.

FEMA denied rental assistance because they had insurance. Their insurance – both homeowner’s and flood – denied loss-of-use funds. It took until the end of December for insurance to send a denial letter.

The anxiety of trying to make the best of worst decisions is really hard.

Lindsay Weishaar, South Venice resident

When she received it, Lindsay raced to the disaster recovery center in Englewood to file it with FEMA along with rental receipts in the hopes of getting rental assistance.

Just this month in March, she heard back from FEMA – telling her to file it again.

“You get worn down,” she said, wanting to give up on it, though deciding to appeal and resend the request.

In the meantime, they’d had a glimmer of hope.

Through their application with Unite Florida, they’d been issued a temporary camper from the state.

That’s where Lindsay, her husband and their daughters – ages 5 and 2 – and their dog, Sandy, have been living since mid-January.

“We make it work,” she said. “We have a big backyard.”

Ultimately, Lindsay and Doug, 41 – who works in his family’s flooring business – exhausted their savings in all the moves and to gut their house.

In the end, their insurance settlement totaled $200,000, which will cover some of the repairs to their roof and drywall.

To pay for the rest, Lindsay and Doug have taken out a loan – totaling $130,000 – to cover the difference.

Through all the stress and unrelenting phone calls, Lindsay, an open-heart operating room nurse, accepted a different position at the hospital for more stable hours – taking a $25,000 annual pay cut, as well.

She and Doug work hard to keep things together for the kids.

“Most days, I wake up and I know I can see my house, and I know we’re going to return to it,” she said, her voice starting to crack.

“If we are back in our house at the year anniversary of the storm, I will be grateful and happy.”

This story comes from a partnership between the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and the Community Foundation of Sarasota County. Saundra Amrhein covers the Season of Sharing campaign, along with issues surrounding housing, utilities, child care and transportation in the area. She can be reached at samrhein@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: FEMA, insurance little help for Sarasota after Hurricane Ian