Return to Sanibel Island after Ian: Smashed homes, slick ooze, and wondering how to rebuild
Boatload by boatload – and the odd helicopter bellyful – people are returning to Sanibel.
The city hasn’t officially estimated how many have made it back after the now-unbridged island’s reopening Wednesday. Unofficially, things have been pretty quiet, reports resident Bridgit Stone-Budd, who weathered the storm in her self-described treehouse with her mother, Linda Miller, husband, Dan, and dogs Sophie, Adrian and puppy Goose.
Residents and workers arrived booted, backpacked and braced for the worst. The 18-square mile barrier island they stepped back onto is staggeringly different than the one they left before Hurricane Ian upended life on Sept. 28.
Quiet now reigns, save the occasional thumping throb of a Chinook helicopter or the passing roar of a Humvee. Smells are all off too. The usual sun-warmed salt air tinged with mangrovey musk has been replaced by something more menacing: diesel, drying sewage, hot plastic.
The green wall of native trees that shaded main drag, Periwinkle Way, looks blowtorched, lying splintered or sheared off in raggedy clumps. The wind gouged open grand homes, shoved cars into mangroves, boats onto lawns and garlanded the whole place with trash.
With Gulf water as a battering ram, the storm smashed through the raised 3-mile causeway that once connected island to mainland. An alligator commandeered the post office. Staff at the celebrated J.N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge have yet to release a damage assessment.
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Of course, Sanibel isn’t the only storm-pummeled Gulf barrier island. Estero Island, home of Fort Myers Beach and Pine Island, with Bokeelia, Saint James City and Pineland, are reeling as well.
If the other two attracted more working families and blue-collar retirees, Sanibel’s collars were generally white or found atop golf shirts instead of Hanes Ts. Sanibel’s per-capita income is $90,146 and its median home value $703,800 compared with Fort Myers Beach’s $63,402 and $474,900 and Pine Island’s $44,995 and $240,600.
WIth a year-'round population of almost 6,400 that rises to some 30,000 in season, Sanibel has always drawn plenty of well-heeled visitors, some of whom settle in: Johnny Depp, Eric Clapton and NBC weatherman Willard Scott, who made the island his second home. And, like Bridgit, celebrated author and restaurateur Randy Wayne White stayed for the storm with singer-songwriter wife Wendy Webb.
About his experience, White told the Tampa Bay Times earlier this week, "It was exciting, it was harrowing, and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. It’s history, and I was there. And you know I love history.”
Unsure what next but Sanibel resident says, 'we have each other'
Yet there are plenty of islanders who belie the rich-folk stereotype. Friday morning, Joyce and Dick Houston, who’ve known each other since they were 16 (and are now 78 and 79), were trudging home. He’s a retired engineer; she worked in the fashion industry and taught tai chi up north before they moved here for good.
Laden with tote bags, coolers and Thermoses clinking with ice, they were headed to their trailer in Periwinkle Park & Campground. The tropically funky palm- and orchid-adorned island retreat was known for its collection of exotic parrots, macaws and lemurs, (most drowned in the storm, a park Facebook post read).
After vacationing on the island since 1985, the Houstons had an epiphany.
“I said, ‘You know what? I want to live here someday,’ Joyce said. “No headaches, no blacktop road … So we sold our beach house in Lewes, Delaware – sold everything – and bought us a mobile,” she said with a laugh. Their vintage home sits on a large lot backed up to a mangrove creek.
They lovingly redid their half-century-old trailer: custom kitchen, sliding barn door, shiplap siding, white-painted wicker. Then they settled in for “Some of the best years of our life.”
They loved their neighbors, one of whom is an egret named Ada (after Joyce’s mother). “She comes and taps on the back door every day and I give her chicken hearts,” she said. “That’s filet mignon for birds.”
Then she shudders.
“So you can imagine what my place is going to smell like – I’ve got them in my freezer.”
Once at their house, where half a bottle of Glenlivet had floated out to settle under an ixora, Dick hoisted himself up through a porch window – probably the one that released the Scotch – and eventually shoved open a door.
The storm had coated the floor in mud and flipped furniture. The swollen maze was made even more treacherous by the still-slick ooze underfoot. The Houstons squeezed past overturned couches, stepping gingerly over glass tabletops and a hand-made shell frame. Soon, they’d be snapping open trash bags to toss sodden treasures and salvage what they could.
The place wasn’t insured, Joyce said. “Too old.”
They’re not sure what comes next, but they are sure of one thing, she said: “We have each other.”
More: First 12 hours back on Sanibel 'very successful,' city manager says
'Sanibel has been so great to us...we'll get through it'
Some, like Jeff and Noah Weigel, headed back before the official opening. Early Monday, the father and son kayaked to the island – four hours and about
four miles across open water each way from Bunche Beach, where they returned in the afternoon. A handful of laminated plaques poked from the top of Noah’s unzipped backpack – the kind restaurants hang on their walls after a good review in the local paper – which, in fact these were.
Noah’s dad, Jeff, owns the Sanibel Deli and Coffee Factory, which he opened in 2008; one of the clippings is a story from right after their opening; another gave them Best Pizza honors.
“One I’m really proud of was when we were one of six restaurants in Lee County with perfect health department scores, so we grabbed that too,” Jeff said, smiling at the once-upon-a-time, as so many now find themselves doing.
To get to Sanibel, they kayaked under what’s left of the causeway. The landscape changes were surreal, Jeff said. “It took me a minute to realize where we were. That whole area, one side used to be grass and fishing pier and (it’s) just not there anymore. It's just opened all the way up.”
But he wanted to get to the place into which he’s poured the last 15 years of his life.
“I started from scratch. So dollarwise, I don’t know how I’d put a number on it, but I worked seven days a week for years and years and years. It affects your life, it affects your health and everything else,” he said.
The deli building is still there, he said, “but the inside looks like somebody picked it up and shook it … the kitchen is trashed. It’s just destroyed.”
As for the future, “I just don't know,” he said. “I mean, if somebody said, ‘Go ahead and start cleaning up,' I don’t even know how … There’s destruction everywhere.”
And yet, the Weigels aren't quitters, something that's becoming plain about any number of residents and business owners on this island.
“Through oil spills, housing market crashes, the pandemic … Sanibel has been so great to us and supported us through everything. It’s just a tight community. We’ll get through it, but it’s going to be a long, long time.”
Hero provides bikes for 'the longest road in the world'
Island livery owner Billy Kirkland of Billy's Rentals has become a hero to those returning vehicle-less (which last week was pretty much everyone not on an official crew). Need a bike? Take one, he told residents at a city meeting last week. "Anyone that wants a bike, please stop by," he said "All I ask (is) that you get it from the bottom of the pile, so I don't have to.”
More: Sanibel's 'CROW is not going anywhere' despite Hurricane Ian damage
Wheels and wire baskets are a lifesaver on the denuded, sun-blasted streets, as resident force of nature Bridgit will tell you: “Periwinkle is the longest road in the world, I’ve come to realize.”
This morning, dreadlocks barely corralled behind a cerise scarf, a bright tangle of bracelets on her wrist, she’s pedaling up Periwinkle on a Billy’s bike, checking homes for friends who’ve phoned in desperate pleas – cautiously.
“The roads don’t belong to us. The roads belong to them,” she said, of the military and first responders. “Those trucks blow by you like you’re not even there.”
But Bridgit’s not complaining; her restaurant, The Pecking Order, was damaged, but not beyond repair, although all the food was lost.
“We filled a Dumpster with soooooo much chicken,” she said, “and there’s so much sludge, but as soon as we get water we’ll squeegee that right out of there … I can’t wait to get it fired back up.” She’s optimistic it’ll be sooner rather than later: “We’re on the same grid as the fire house.”
Meanwhile, she’s looking out for neighbors’ homes and sharing island life via her TikTok videos, which have become a first-hand hurricane journal:
Saturday Sept. 24: “It’s not time to panic, it’s time to prepare.”
Monday, Sept. 26: “The panic has set in.” Later that day: “Stay safe. Hurricane of a lifetime.”
Tuesday, Sept. 27: “He’s coming.”
Wednesday, Sept. 28, 4 a.m.: “Power just went out,” then at 12:22 p.m.: He’s definitely getting stronger, Two friends’ houses are ankle-deep in water,” then at 1 p.m.: “Holy s?:!@ the surge is here.”
Her post-storm posts have detailed recovery: the landing of heavy-lift Chinook helicopters, establishment of military checkpoints, the arrival of water and supplies. She’s also been gratified to watch the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation, renowned for its environmental work, pivot to hurricane support. “The SCCF is helping out a LOT,” she said.
She counts herself among the blessed and fortunate (despite occasional kisses from puppy Goose, who can’t resist dead fish).
“Our yard and house, from the bottom of our porch everything below it is trashed,” she said. That includes their vehicles and Dan’s work truck for his construction company, but the upper stories are livable, she says, “and hey, it forced me to clean and declutter, so that’s good."
This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Hurricane Ian: Sanibel Island residents return to survey the damage
