Volunteers help rebuild as south Sarasota County homeowners still recovering from Ian

Like many of their neighbors in Venice Ranch Mobile Home Estates, Jackie Wheeler, her son Curtis Brown, brother C.J. Hatter and mother Midge Ellis rode out Hurricane Ian in the development’s community center.

A solid brick building with hurricane resistant windows, it was secure, if a little bit cramped, as almost 50 people sheltered there during the storm and remained for almost a week, until the floodwaters from Hatchett Creek – just to the south of the family-owned, 55-and-older manufactured housing community – receded enough for them to return home.

Hurricane Ian made landfall in Lee County on Sept. 28, 2022. After six days had passed, Jackie and her family returned home, though they had no power and needed a generator to run the refrigerator. They would return to the center for regular hot meals.

But returning to a normal life would take much longer.

The mobile home – which she purchased in November 2019 for $5,000 – would be repaired in part through donated labor crews provided by the nonprofit World Renew Disaster Recovery Group and other volunteer efforts coordinated through the Sarasota County’s Long Term Recovery Group, which is operated under the auspices of the United Way of South Sarasota County.

Chris Johnson, vice president of community impact for United Way of South Sarasota County, convener of the Long Term Recovery Group, told the North Port City Commission Jan. 9 that while Hurricane Ian is in the past for some, many people in Sarasota County are living in homes not yet fixed and at times uninhabitable.

Hurricane Ian is considered the third most costly hurricane in the U.S., behind Katrina in 2005 and Harvey in 2017, and the costliest ever in Florida after causing nearly $113 billion in damage and 149 deaths.

“For so many people this is an everyday occurrence,” Johnson said.

Not that residents of North Port, one of the hardest high areas of Sarasota County, need a reminder of that.

He went on to praise the city’s permitting division, which the nonprofit has worked with to identify 921 homes that needed repairs.

The Long Term Recovery Group is handling more than 359 cases, In all, 45% of the work the group is coordinating is being done in North Port, with 10 homes completed and four in the process of being rebuilt.

Recovery over the long haul

A formula developed by National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster calculates that it takes 100 days of recovery for each day of search and rescue after a disaster.

Search and rescue efforts in Sarasota County spanned nine days and ended Oct. 7, 2022, which means it could take 900 days for Sarasota County to recover from Hurricane Ian.

The Long Term Recovery Group helped residents like Jackie and her family follow up with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to receive aid. More recently it has been working with faith-based nonprofits like World Renew and Convoy of Hope to secure construction materials for home repairs and provide volunteer labor to fix those homes.

That recovery will be bolstered by $201.5 million in U.S. Housing and Urban Development block grant funding that will be disbursed through the Resilient SRQ program.

On Jan. 30, the Sarasota County Commission is scheduled to approve a proposed application timeline and scoring criteria for nonprofits and local governments to apply for $70 million in funds allocated for public facilities and infrastructure.

Once that’s approved, the Resilient SRQ team will open the application process as quickly as possible.

Those funds are meant to pay for upgrades to guard against future storm damage, with $25 million already set aside for the elevation and widening of South River Road between Winchester Boulevard and Tamiami Trail.

Resilient SRQ Program Manager Laurel Varnell said Sarasota County is finalizing hiring a construction management firm to administer the $40 million set aside for home rehabilitation and reconstruction.

Contractors will have to go through a competitive bid process to perform that work.

Early on, the Long Term Recovery Group contemplated putting in a bid to administer those funds but, Johnson said, they quickly realized that was too large a task for the nonprofit.

Instead, he hopes to work closely with the construction manager responsible for that $40 million, so the volunteer efforts can help Sarasota County stretch the money.

“For a lot of people, Ian is way in the past, so you start running into funding issues,” Johnson said. “This year we’re good, but going into 2025, making sure we have the funding to move forward. I think a big part of that is going to be the CDBG-GR funding (Resilient SRQ).

‘We thought it was minimal damage’

Located just south of East Venice Avenue and east of Auburn Road, Venice Ranch is a small community with about 180 spaces. Each street bears the name of extended members of the Ellis family (no relation to Jackie and her mom).

It’s also the type of place where neighbors may stop by unannounced to repay a previous kindness with an uncooked bowl of pasta.

Friends who arrived early from up north in a motorhome to check on park damage brought tarps to help secure roofs and able-bodied neighbors helped to get things right.

“This was all on our own and volunteers from the community just showed up and started helping,” Jackie said.

“At the time when we were able to get back into our home we thought it was minimal damage,” she said.

Plus, six days in the center was about all Midge, who has Alzheimer’s, could tolerate in the center.

“Mom didn’t even know what was going on,” Jackie, 68, said, seated at a table in the covered carport of her home on Max Road.

“‘I want to go home,” she told Jackie.

The most severe visible damage appeared to be that the roof over the front room, a converted porch that serves as Jackie’s bedroom. It had holes where she could see the sky.

“We put tarps over that roof just to make sure the water didn't come through the holes,” she said.

“As the months went on, the floor started to get spongy, we started seeing mold; it was horrible,” she added, noting that most of the furniture that had been stored in the manufactured home was ruined by mold.

By then, Jackie and the family had already contacted FEMA and received some aid. But they clearly needed more.

FEMA staffers were helpful but the paperwork required was too complex for Jackie.

“It was just unreal … so I gave up. I didn’t know what else to do,” she said. “I didn’t have the time to do all they wanted me to do and no other resources.”

Last spring, Jackie spotted a flier about the Long Term Recovery Group that the complex manager had posted at the clubhouse.

She contacted the group and though it took a while for volunteers to get through more critical cases, eventually she was matched with her case manager Hilda Dutton, who was then working with the Salvation Army.

Dutton helped her reconnect with FEMA and get as much money as possible for the roof repair, since that front room was a living space.

Jackie filled out an application for aid through World Renew. John Livingston, a Disaster Recovery General Contractor working with the United Way of South Sarasota County, checked out the home.

She had to get bids for a new roof. The first contractors had no clue how to repair a manufactured home roof but she eventually linked with American Roofing and Exteriors, which had experience in doing that type of roof repair.

When the cost came in above the available funds, United Way made up the difference.

Workers from World Renew fixed the interior, replacing ruined floor boards and cleaning the mold.

The family was able to rent a neighbor's house while crews worked on hers.

Repairs started Nov. 1, 2023 with a goal of finishing in this month.

Anxious about spending both Thanksgiving and Midge’s 94th birthday out of their home, Jackie asked if there was any way to speed things up so they could spend Christmas there.

Three World Renew crews – they work in three-week shifts – labored on their home. The workers took it down to the studs then rebuilt the interior.

Jackie and her family were able to move back in on Dec. 15, though one bathroom was not finished.

“Once they brought in World Renew, oh my gosh, they were awesome,” Jackie said.

The third and final crew arrived on Jan. 7 to finish the work.

Manufactured homes are considered motor vehicles in the state of Florida and prohibitively expensive to insure. Like many people who live in them, Jackie had no insurance, so without the volunteer labor coordinated through the Long Term Recovery Group, she would have had to just demolish the home.

Johnson said that even now – 16 months after Hurricane Ian struck – residents are still approaching the Long Term Recovery Group for the first time.

“We want to know if there’s anybody who hasn’t heard about the LTRG yet, who has hurricane damage,” Johnson said. “We want to make sure that word is getting out there, because there are still people trickling in that don’t know about it."

The number to call for help is 941-484-4811.

“We’re here long term,” he added. “We’re going to be here until the end to make sure everybody is returned to that safe, sanitary, secure and functional home.”

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: 16 months later, Sarasota County residents still cope with Ian damage