Recollections of Hurricane Ian

Hurricanes are a familiar and increasing threat to Floridians. One student recalls the day she and her family survived Hurricane Ian.

Editor's note: Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida on Sept. 28, 2022. It's considered the third-costliest hurricane to affect the U.S.

My memories of the storm are hardly concrete.

I remember glimpses of conversations and snapshots of scenes recycled from pictures that my sisters took that day on their phones. 

Mainly, I remember a steady list of to-dos – we needed to get everything off the floor; we needed to decide what was valuable enough to stuff into backpacks; we needed to leave; we needed to keep moving.

“Everything you want to see again needs to go on the top of your closet or in a backpack,” I told my sisters. I had a self-assuredness that I now look back on with contempt. 

An atmospheric photo of Hurricane Ian, September 2022. Photo provided by NOAA.

I remember knowing everything was going to be OK. I remember convincing myself of this so I could convince my two younger sisters. One knew she wanted to go to nursing school. The other was a freshman in high school. Both were shorter than me by not much, though they’ve grown since then. 

The day of the storm I slept in until noon. I have lived in Naples, Florida, my whole life and nothing bad had ever happened so I believed nothing bad could ever happen. 

My house is perched on the rocky edge of a canal. I have vivid memories of my neighbor - a boy several years younger than me - falling into the murky water when he was a toddler. My dad fished him out as he shrieked. I often return to this scene and how fast it all happened. One minute he was bone-dry, feet dangling and counting the catfish as they swam past. The next, he was underwater and even more quickly rescued. 

Our house is white with a pink door to match the thorny bougainvillea bush my dad planted when I was small. Next to the pink door hangs a ceramic welcome sign reading “God Bless this House” to match the steadfast faith of my parents.

Predictions about Hurricane Ian’s path conflicted. Most hurricane forecasting models anticipated the storm to hit closer to Tampa, about two hours north. Residents in our neighborhood were still ordered to evacuate.

“My friends are all leaving. Are we really going to stay?” My youngest sister asked. The main form of preparation I did was watch an animated storm surge simulation video I found on YouTube, which assured me that I was going to die. 

As winds picked up and the sky turned overcast, water rose from the canal behind our house and overtook the rickety wooden boat dock and spilled into our pool cage. Within a matter of minutes, the water was seeping under the baseboards.

My dad had been living in our “God-blessed” house for 30 years and nothing bad had ever happened.

We decide to leave

My sisters and I decided to leave when we realized the rain had stopped but water continued to rise. At first my dad trailed behind my sisters and I as we hurriedly prepped the house. He tried undoing our work by plugging power cords back into their sockets but was soon distracted by the puddles of flood water forming along the back wall of the house. 

Sometimes he remembers standing in three-foot high water holding our family dog. Other times, he remembers floating on the living room couch like it was a pool raft.

My sisters and I appraised our belongings and stuffed what was valuable and necessary into backpacks, ensuring they weren’t so heavy that they would prevent us from swimming if we needed to. We threw items that were valuable but not necessary - or too heavy - in the tops of closets. 

I waded out into the knee-deep water that was once our front yard scoping out a path of escape. When we began our exodus 15 minutes later, the water was at my waist. 

We worked hurriedly and silently for the most part. I felt a comfortable, mind-numbing calm.

Leaving still felt like a betrayal. We couldn’t have just our faith; we needed to go, we needed to keep moving. 

I said, “We all need to link arms,” which felt so dramatic, especially in the eerie stillness of the storm. It wasn’t raining which surprised me. The sky and rising water were painted in hazy shades of gray. Our neighbor’s house was nearby and on higher ground and I wanted us all to link arms as we made our way through the sewage water that had overtaken our front yard. 

We were in the water and I was pulling them to higher ground, but they couldn’t see that and - assuming I was confused - attempted to anchor our daisy chain of linked arms into the muddy earth. 

I was grumpy and frankly mean as I pulled my sisters and mom through the waist-deep water up to the higher ground of my neighbor's yard. I feel like that was my fear manifesting at that moment: grumpiness instead of panic. We didn’t believe that we could die. Death, in this way, wasn't a mental image I could generate, so I just felt numb. 

In the wake of Hurricane Ian, Floridians were faced with a paralyzing calm, as survivors were met with the realization that nothing will be the same. 

For me, Ian put climate change into perspective, bringing the overwhelming awareness that not only are storms getting more extreme, but constant development in Florida is rendering the state more vulnerable to destruction each year. 

A changing landscape for stormfall

I have watched developers exchange orchards of orange trees for luxury housing and mangrove sea walls for even more coastal real estate. 

Rapid development in Florida is part of the reason why Ian’s devastation was so vast. It is estimated that the hurricane caused $40 billion worth of damage to infrastructure. A significant portion of this damage was caused by flooding and Ian’s particularly destructive storm surge. Florida coastlines are naturally equipped to handle storm surges as lush mangrove forests provide a defense against winds and wave swells. However, development projects continue to eat away at this barrier in favor of making a profit.

My childhood home was destroyed by Hurricane Ian, and my family was suddenly faced with two options. We could either rebuild ourselves, crossing our fingers that the next hurricane season would prove more gracious to Southwest Florida, or sell to developers. Either way, we would move forward, we would subdue nature even if that meant building on unstable soil.

Collier County impacts of Hurricane Ian, September 2022. Photo provided by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

In the days immediately following the storm, long-term recovery was not even a consideration. We lived that weekend in a trance, shocked by cloudless blue skies that seemed to forgo the memory of Ian entirely. 

Begrudgingly, Floridians began to go through the motions of rebuilding. The thought of another hurricane was something we forced ourselves to ignore. We tore away the remnants of our homes and businesses. Piles of water-logged furniture and damp drywall lined the streets for weeks after the storm. Good Samaritans weaved in and out of neighborhoods in pickup trucks looking for people to help. My parents’ church offered photo ops with Gov. Ron DeSantis and sandwiches.

Developers circled like vultures, hungry for even more destruction. A little greenhouse was the first to go. According to neighborhood gossip, it was sold for $2.2 million the day after the storm. Over the years my sisters and I have passed that house on bikes and rollerblades never guessing that it would turn its owner into a millionaire overnight. 

Motivated by a combination of resilience and pride the rest of the neighborhood banded together in a sort of vigilante stand against developers. If they wanted our property so badly, they would have to pay. Everyone promised to not sell for under $3 million. And just like that, it was settled, we would be braving another hurricane season. 

This was not the first time that developers had taken an interest in our street, nor was it the first time our neighbors allied. The Collier County Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) has been attempting to beautify Bayshore since 2000. These efforts resulted in beautiful streetlights, and a beautiful food truck park, luring in wealthy home-seekers excited to build beautiful homes to match. We held on to the remnants of our house for dear life. 

The idea of “selling out” was perhaps most tempting during the day of the storm as my family gathered around our kitchen window to gauge how far the canal waters had risen over our dock. As I peeked through the gap in the hurricane shutters, the idea of staying was unfathomable. We had to get out of the house.

In hurricane seasons since we have had a more concrete plan of staking linens and rugs and mattresses in a princess and the pea-like tower and of moving out at the first rumor of a storm. 

My dad still guards our house, the one we have rebuilt — because it still feels, beneath the rolling clouds and bright blue Florida sky, nothing bad has ever happened here.