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  • Florida shrimpers race to get battered fleet back to sea

    Florida shrimpers race to get battered fleet back to sea

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    FORT MYERS BEACH, Fla. — The seafood industry in southwest Florida is racing against time and the elements to save what’s left of a major shrimping fleet — and a lifestyle — that was battered by Hurricane Ian.

    The storm’s ferocious wind and powerful surge hurled a couple dozen shrimp boats atop wharves and homes along the harbor on Estero Island. Jesse Clapham, who oversees a dozen trawlers for a large seafood company at Fort Myers Beach, is trying to get boats back to sea as quickly as possible — before their engines, winches and pulleys seize up from being out of the water.

    One of two shrimpers that didn’t sink or get tossed onto land went out Sunday, but the victory was small compared with the task ahead.

    “There’s 300 people who work for us and all of them are out of a job right now. I’m sure they’d rather just mow all this stuff down and build a giant condo here, but we’re not going to give up,” said Clapham, who manages the fishing fleet at Erickson and Jensen Seafood, which he said handles $10 million in shrimp annually.

    The company’s fractured wharves, flooded office and processing house are located on Main Street beside another large seafood company, Trico Shrimp Co. There, a crane lifted the outrigger of grounded shrimper Aces & Eights — the first step toward getting it back in the water. Across the yard, the massive Kayden Nicole and Renee Lynn sat side-by-side in the parking lot, stern to bow.

    Shrimping is the largest piece of Florida’s seafood industry, with a value of almost $52 million in 2016, state statistics show. Gulf of Mexico shrimp from Fort Myers has been shipped all over the United States for generations.

    Now, it’s a matter of when the fishing can resume and whether there will still be experienced crews to operate the boats when that happens.

    Deckhand Michele Bryant didn’t just lose a job when the boat where she works was grounded, she lost her home. Shrimping crews are at sea for as long as two months at a time, she said, so members often don’t have homes on land.

    “I’ve got nowhere to stay,” she said. “I’m living in a tent.”

    Richard Brown’s situation is just as precarious. A citizen of Guyana who was working on a boat out of Miami when Ian hit southwest Florida, Brown rode out the storm on one of four boats that were lashed together along a harbor seawall.

    “We tried to fight the storm. The lines were bursting. We kept replacing them but when the wind turned everybody was on land,” he said.

    There’s no way to catch shrimp on a boat surrounded by dirt, so Brown is staying busy scraping barnacles off the hull of the Gulf Star. “It’s like it’s on dry dock,” he said — but he’s no more sure what to do now than at the height of the storm.

    “It was terrifying – the worst experience,” said Brown, who is more than 2,160 miles (3,480 kilometers) from his home in South America. “I was just thinking, ‘You could abandon the ship.’ But where are you going?”

    Seafood fleets along the Gulf Coast are used to getting wiped out by hurricanes. Katrina pummeled the industry from Louisiana to Alabama in 2005, and the seafood business in southern Louisiana is still recovering from Hurricane Ida’s punch last year. But this part of Florida hasn’t seen a storm like Ian in a century, leaving people to wonder what happens next.

    Dale Kalliainen and his brother followed their father into the shrimping business and owns the trawler Night Wind, which landed amid a mobile home park near a bridge. He said high fuel prices and low-cost imported seafood took a bite out the industry long before Ian did its worst.

    “There used to be 300 boats in this harbor and now there’s maybe 50,” he said. “It’s going to be probably years before this business is even close to being back to what it was.”

    Clapham, the 47-year-old fleet manager, has spent his entire life on shrimp boats. The industry already operates on a thin margin and needs help recovering from Ian, he said.

    “These boats go out and catch $60,000, $70,000 worth of shrimp a month, but it costs $30,000 to $50,000 to put fuel on them and groceries and supplies, and then you’ve got to pay the crew. And sometimes these boats’ (catches) don’t even pay for everything,” he said. “We take money from one boat and get another boat going and send ’em back fishing just to keep going.”

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  • Search for victims done, Florida coast aims for Ian recovery

    Search for victims done, Florida coast aims for Ian recovery

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    FORT MYERS, Fla. — An army of 42,000 utility workers has restored electricity to more than 2.5 million businesses and homes in Florida since Hurricane Ian’s onslaught, and Brenda Palmer’s place is among them. By the government’s count, she and her husband Ralph are part of a success story.

    Yet turning on the lights in a wrecked mobile home that’s likely beyond repair and reeks of dried river mud and mold isn’t much solace to people who lost a lifetime of work in a few hours of wind, rain and rising seawater. Sorting through soggy old photos of her kids in the shaded ruins of her carport, Palmer couldn’t help but cry.

    “Everybody says, ’You can’t save everything, mom,’” she said. “You know, it’s my life. It’s MY life. It’s gone.”

    With the major search for victims over and a large swath of Florida’s southwest coast settling in for the long slog of recovering from its first direct hit from a major hurricane in a century, residents are bracing for what will be months, if not years, of work. Mourning lost heirlooms will be hard; so will fights with insurance companies and decisions about what to do next.

    Around the corner from the Palmers in Coach Light Manor, a retirement community of 179 mobile homes that was flooded by two creeks and a canal, a sad realization hit Susan Colby sometime between the first time she saw her soggy home after Ian and Sunday, when she was picking through its remains.

    “I’m 86 years old and I’m homeless,” she said. “It’s just crazy. I mean, never in my life did I dream that I wouldn’t have a home. But it’s gone.”

    Officials have blamed more than 100 deaths, most of them in southwest Florida, on Ian, a powerful Category 4 storm with 155 mph (249 kph) winds. It was the third-deadliest storm to hit the U.S. mainland this century behind Hurricane Katrina, which left about 1,400 people dead, and Hurricane Sandy, which killed 233 despite weakening to a tropical storm just before landfall.

    While Gov. Ron DeSantis has heaped lavish praise on his administration for the early phases of the recovery, including getting running water and lights back on and erecting a temporary bridge to Pine Island, much more remains to be done. There are still mountains of debris to remove; it’s hard to find a road that isn’t lined with waterlogged carpet, ruined furniture, moldy mattresses and pieces of homes.

    On the road to Estero Island, scene of the worst damage to Fort Myers Beach, workers are using heavy machines with huge grapples to snatch debris out of swampy areas and deposit it into trucks. Boats of all sizes, from dinghies to huge shrimpers and charter fishing vessels, block roads and sit atop buildings.

    DeSantis said at least some of the roadmap for the coming months in southwest Florida may come from the Florida Panhandle, where Category 5 Hurricane Michael wiped out Mexico Beach and much of Panama City in 2018. Panama City leaders will be brought in to offer advice on the cleanup, DeSantis told a weekend news conference.

    “They’re going to come down on the ground, they’re going to inspect, and then they’ve going to offer some advice to the local officials here in Lee County, Fort Myers Beach and other places,” DeSantis said. “You can do what you want, you don’t have to accept their advice. But I tell you that was a major, major effort.”

    In a region full of retirees, many of whom moved South to get away from the chill of Northern winters, Luther Marth worries that it might be more difficult for some to recover from the psychological effects of Ian than the physical destruction. Two men in their 70s already have taken their own lives after seeing the destruction, officials said.

    Fort Myers was sideswiped by Hurricane Irma in 2017, but Marth said that storm was nothing like Ian, and the emotional toll will be greater, especially for older folks.

    “I’m 88 years old. People my age struggle,” said Marth, who counts himself and his wife Jacqueline among the lucky despite losing a car and thousands of dollars worth of fishing gear, tools and more when their garage filled with more than 5 feet (1.52 meters) of water.

    “If you got wiped out financially you don’t want to start over again, you don’t have the will to start again,” Marth said. “So those are the people my heart breaks for.”

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  • Tropical Storm Julia drenches Central America with rainfall

    Tropical Storm Julia drenches Central America with rainfall

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    SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — Tropical Storm Julia drenched Guatemala and El Salvador with torrential rains Monday after it reemerged in the Pacific following a pounding of Nicaragua.

    Police said two people died in the eastern El Salvador town of Guatajiagua after heavy rains caused a wall of their home to collapse. Rivers overflowed their banks and El Salvador declared a state of emergency and opened 70 storm shelters.

    Julia hit Nicaragua’s central Caribbean coast early Sunday as a hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph (140 kph) and survived the passage over the country’s mountainous terrain, entering the Pacific late in the day as a tropical storm..

    By Monday morning, Julia´s winds were down to 40 mph (65 kph).

    The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Julia was centered about 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of San Salvador, El Salvador, and was moving west-northwest at 15 mph (24 kph).

    The center said life-threatening flash floods and mudslides were possible across Central America and southern Mexico through Tuesday, with the storm expected to bring as much as 15 inches (38 centimeters) of rain in isolated areas.

    In Guatemala, two people were listed as missing and two were hospitalized, and about 1,300 people had to leave their homes because of flooding and rising streams.

    Julia was expected to weaken further and dissipate later Monday as it passes along the Guatemalan coast.

    Colombia’s national disaster agency reported Sunday that Julia blew the roofs off several houses and knocked over trees as it blasted past San Andres Island east of Nicaragua. There were no immediate reports of fatalities

    In Nicaragua, Vice President Rosario Murillo told TN8 television on Sunday that there had been no initial reports of deaths, but power and communications were cut to some areas. She said that 9,500 people had been evacuated to shelters.

    Local news media showed images of trees toppled across roads and local flooding.

    Heavy rains and evacuations were also reported in Panama, Honduras and Costa Rica, where some highways were closed due to the downpours.

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  • Treasures to trash: The personal belongings Hurricane Ian turned into debris | CNN

    Treasures to trash: The personal belongings Hurricane Ian turned into debris | CNN

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    Erica Lee/CNN

    Charlie Whitehead, 64, lives on San Carlos Island, across the Fort Myers Beach isle, and has spent most days since the storm trying to salvage family photos. This one depicts him and his wife, Debbie, when they were younger.

    Nearly two weeks since Hurricane Ian slammed into Florida’s southwestern coast, battered communities are slowly beginning to sort through the damage the storm left. Families that were chin-deep in water in their homes have found there is little left to salvage: the furniture that floated around has dried but is now beginning to mold, wood chests and drawers bear signs of the water damage, electronics are now useless and few cars survived the flooding. Debris that piles high in every driveway offers a glimpse into what the homes behind them used to look like and what families held dear but are now forced to throw out. The trash piles include mementos too deformed to save, treasured photographs, rugs, kitchen tables, dining chairs, mirrors, clothes — most of everything covered in mud.

    “The big trash trucks with the claws, they just come in, they pick that stuff up like it’s nothing. Seventeen years’ worth of hard work gone in a matter of five minutes,” says Miguel Romero, 26, who lives in the Linda Loma neighborhood, near the beach. Romero, his partner and their 1-year-old daughter, along with his parents, went into the attic of their ground-floor home to survive. Almost everything in the house was ruined. But at the end, like many others here, stuff is stuff, he says, and he’s thankful his family is alive.

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  • ‘Nothing’s left’: Hurricane Ian leaves emotional toll behind

    ‘Nothing’s left’: Hurricane Ian leaves emotional toll behind

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    FORT MYERS, Fla. — With her home gone and all her belongings trashed by Hurricane Ian, Alice Pujols wept as she picked through soggy clothes, toys and overturned furniture piled head-high outside a stranger’s house, looking to salvage something — anything — for her four children and herself.

    “I’m trying to make it to the next day,” she said. “That’s all I can do. It’s really depressing. It really is.”

    For those who lost everything to a natural disaster and even those spared, the anguish can be crushing to return home to find so much gone. Grief can run the gamut from frequent tears to utter despair. Two men in their 70s even took their own lives after viewing their losses, said the medical examiner in Lee County, where Ian first made landfall in southwestern Florida.

    The emotional toll in the days, weeks and months after a hurricane, flood or wildfire can be crippling. More pressing needs for food, shelter and clothing often take priority to seeking counseling, which is in short supply even in good times.

    “When someone’s in a state of trauma that so many are in, they don’t know where to begin,” said Beth Hatch, CEO of the Collier County, Florida, branch of the National Alliance of Mental Illness. “They need that hand-holding and they need to know that there’s so many people here to help them.”

    Hurricane Ian hammered Florida with such ferocity that it wiped out whole neighborhoods, tossed boats onto highways, swept away beaches and swamped homes in roof-deep waters.

    With sustained winds of 150 mph (240 kph), it was one of the strongest hurricanes to ever hit southwest Florida. It later cut a watery and wind-battered swath across the Florida peninsula before turning out to sea to regain strength and pummel South Carolina.

    It killed more than 100 people, the majority of victims in Florida, making it the third-deadliest storm to hit the U.S. mainland this century. Even a week after it passed through, officials warned that more victims could yet be found as they continued to inspect the damage. The storm knocked out power to 2.6 million and caused billions of dollars in damage.

    Research has shown that between a third and half of those who survive a disaster develop some type of mental distress, said Jennifer Horney, an epidemiology professor at the University of Delaware who studies natural disaster impacts on public health.

    Post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety rise along with substance abuse. Those with existing mental disorders are at greater risk of having those conditions exacerbated by the trauma.

    A variety of help is available as additional resources are sent to the area.

    The state of Florida was setting up support centers and the federal government has a 24-hour disaster distress helpline to provide counseling and crisis support. Hatch’s organization was going to some homes in hard-hit areas to check on clients with mental illness.

    The vast majority of people, though, were still assessing damage, trying to retrieve and dry out possessions worth keeping and drag what couldn’t be saved to growing trash heaps by the side of the road.

    On Pine Island, just off the Florida mainland where Ian first struck, an emotional Alan Bickford said he was trying to take a longer view because what lay before him was bleak: the floors of his home were coated in stinky muck and his yard was littered with framed photos, furniture and other items he’d hauled outside.

    “It’s like a death of a loved one. The pain just comes and goes,” he said. “There’s times when there are these little glimmers or slivers of hope. And then everything falls apart.”

    Riding out a deadly storm amid screaming winds, pounding waves and rising waters, or escaping as danger closes in is terrifying and traumatic. Living out of a duffel bag or suitcase in an evacuation center is disruptive, stressful and depressing. Returning to a flood-ravaged home that needs to be gutted to prevent mold from taking hold or, worse, reduced to splinters and scrap metal and scattered like confetti is heartbreaking.

    Mao Lin walked an hour Thursday to reach the plot of land where she had lived on Fort Myers Beach, which looked like a blast zone. She was distressed to find it gone.

    “The whole street — nothing’s left,” she said. “We don’t have a home. We don’t have a car. We don’t have anything. We have nothing left.”

    In recent days, the number of calls have doubled at Hatch’s organization as people recognize they cannot rebuild their lives — and overcome trauma — alone.

    “The needs are going to change over time,” Hatch said. “Some people have lost everything, maybe the walls of their home may be still standing, but they’re uninhabitable.”

    Cleaning up the mess of a damaged home or finding a new one in the wake of a catastrophe gives way to the longer term challenges of navigating the maze of bureaucracy for financial assistance, securing permits for rebuilding or fighting insurance companies over reimbursements.

    Horney studied suicide rates in counties that experienced a disaster between 2003-2015. She and her colleagues found suicides increased 23% when comparing the three-year period preceding a disaster to the three years after an event, according to the study published in The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention.

    She said the Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 suicides of men in their 70s was not typical so soon after a catastrophic event.

    “It’s not usually an immediate, post-disaster thing,” Horney said. “It’s really these longer-term mental health problems that have either been exacerbated by or caused by the disaster that then over time tend to lead to more severe outcomes like suicide.”

    In the aftermath of a disaster, communities pull together to recover and rebuild. Rescuers, relief workers and nonprofit organizations provide food, funding and other help, including counseling. But attention eventually fades and the money dries up. Emergency funds for mental health sometimes expire in as soon as two months and last no longer than a year.

    With disasters becoming more frequent and more severe due to climate change, there could be a cumulative effect on mental health, Horney said. She said her study calls for more funding to fix the damage that is felt but can’t be seen.

    Most of the emotional impacts of a disaster are short-lived but they could be worsened if followed by another cataclysmic event.

    “If it was usual that symptoms would resolve in six months to a year, but then there’s another hurricane or another wildfire, then you’re in this cycle of intensifying mental health impacts,” Horney said. “The research is definitely clear that the more disasters you’re exposed to, the stronger the impacts on mental health.”

    Joe Kuczko hunkered down with his parents as their Pine Island mobile home was battered by the storm. Kuczko got a gash in his foot that he stitched himself after a piece of the roof blew off.

    Pieces of mangled metal lay on the ground Thursday along with containers full of possessions and clothes hung to dry as Kuczko, shirtless and with a sunburn on his back, strung up a tarp to keep the rain out of what remained of the home.

    “I lost the first 30 years of my life,” he said. “Every time I hear the wind blow and a piece of aluminum shift, it’s like PTSD.”

    ———

    Melley reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press journalist Robert Bumsted contributed to this story from Pine Island, Florida.

    ———

    The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available for those in distress by dialing 988 or 1-800-273-8255.

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  • Rain-fueled landslide sweeps through Venezuela town; 22 dead

    Rain-fueled landslide sweeps through Venezuela town; 22 dead

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    LAS TEJERÍAS, Venezuela — A landslide fueled by flooding and days of torrential rain swept through a town in central Venezuela, leaving at least 22 people dead as it dragged mud, rocks and trees through neighborhoods, authorities said Sunday. Dozens of people are missing.

    Residents of Las Tejerías in Santos Michelena, an agro-industrial town in Aragua state 54 miles (87 kilometers) southwest of Caracas, had just seconds to reach safety late Saturday as debris swept down a mountainside onto them.

    The official death toll rose to 22 after the recovery of 20 bodies on Sunday, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez told state-owned Venezolana de Televisión.

    “There was a large landslide in the central area of Las Tejerías” where five streams overflowed, she said from the scene of the disaster. “We have already found 22 dead people; there are more than 52 missing.”

    “There are still people walled in,” Rodríguez said. “We are trying to rescue them, to rescue them alive.”

    She said shelters will be set up for people who lost their homes.

    Higher on the mountainside, most of the houses were swept away, including those of a group of Evangelicals who were praying when the landslide hit, said homemaker Carmen Teresa Chirinos, a resident of Las Tejerías. Families in tears hugged in front of destroyed homes and businesses.

    “There are a lot of people missing,” Chirinos said.

    Hours earlier, Major Gen. Carlos Pérez Ampueda, the vice minister for risk management and civil protection, had said via Twitter that several people were reported missing in the El Béisbol and La Agotada neighborhoods in the north of the town. Dozens of homes were damaged by the landslide.

    Rescuers were carrying out search operations with trained dogs and drones, Pérez Ampueda said. Crews of workers and heavy machinery removed debris to clear roads and restore electricity and water services.

    “So many families lost their houses and I, as a businessman, lost my pizzeria,” said Luis Fuentes, who opened his pizza restaurant two years ago. “Look, I have nothing.”

    Aragua Gov. Karina Carpio said the flood waters “terribly affected” 21 sectors in Las Tejerías, capital of the Santos Michelena municipality, which has some 54,000 inhabitants.

    During the past week, torrential rains have caused flooding in 11 of Venezuela’s 23 states.

    President Nicolás Maduro said 20.000 officials, including rescuers and members of security forces, have been deployed to affected regions.

    ———

    Associated Press journalists Jorge Rueda contributed to this report from Caracas and Matías Delacroix from Las Tejerías.

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  • Ian leaves scenes of recovery, despair on Florida coast

    Ian leaves scenes of recovery, despair on Florida coast

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    FORT MYERS, Fla. — Just days after Hurricane Ian struck, a crowd of locals gathered under a huge banyan tree at a motel’s outdoor tiki bar for drink specials and live music. Less than 10 miles away, crews were finishing the search for bodies on a coastal barrier island. Even closer, entire families were trying to get comfortable for the night in a mass shelter housing more than 500 storm victims.

    On a coast where a few miles meant the difference between life and death, relief and ruin, the contrasting scenes of reality less than two weeks since the hurricane‘s onslaught are jarring, and they point to the way disaster can mean so many different things to different people.

    Arlan Fuller has seen the disparity while working in the hurricane zone to serve marginalized communities with Project Hope, a nonprofit that provides medical relief services. A few factors seem to account for the vast differences from one place to the next, he said: People and places closest to the coast usually fared the worst, as did people with lower incomes.

    “There’s an interesting combination of location, the sturdiness of the structure people lived in, and means,” said Fuller.

    On Pine Island, where the state quickly erected a temporary bridge to replace one washed out by the storm, volunteers are handing out water, ice, food and supplies. The island’s Publix grocery store reopened with generator power faster than seemed possible, pleasing island resident Charlotte Smith, who didn’t evacuate.

    “My home is OK. The lower level did flood somewhat. But I’m dry. They have the water back on running. Things are really getting pretty good.” Smith said.

    Life is very different for Shanika Caldwell, 40, who took her nine children to a mass shelter located inside Hertz Arena, a minor league hockey coliseum, after another shelter located at a public high school shut down so classes could get ready to resume. The family was living in a motel before the storm but had to flee after the roof flew off, she said.

    “If they say they are going to start school next week, how am I going to get my kids back and forth from school all the way here?” she said. Nearby, a huge silver statue of an ice hockey player looked out over the arena parking lot.

    As three shrimpers watched a Sunday afternoon NFL game on a television set in the shade of a trawler that was pushed ashore by Ian, Alexa Alvarez wiped away tears as she stood in the rubble of Fort Myers Beach. She has fond memories of childhood trips with her brother and parents, who lived on the island and lost their home to the storm.

    “I had to see it for myself, and just kind of say goodbye,” she said.

    Ian, a strong Category 4 storm with 155 mph (249 kph) winds, was blamed for more than 100 deaths, the overwhelming majority of them in southwest Florida. It was the third-deadliest storm to hit the U.S. mainland this century behind Hurricane Katrina, which left about 1,400 people dead, and Hurricane Sandy, which had a total death count of 233 despite weakening to a tropical storm just before it made landfall.

    For some, the recovery has been fairly quick. Barber shops, car washes, chain restaurants, a gun range and vape shops — lots of vape shops — already have reopened on U.S. 41, known in southern Florida as the Tamiami Trail. Many traffic lights are operating, yet residents of low-lying homes and mobile home parks just off the highway are still shoveling mud that was left behind by floodwaters.

    In Punta Gorda, near where boutiques and investment firms do business along a tony street lined by palm trees, Judy Jones, 74, is trying to provide for more than 40 residents of the bare-bones homeless shelter she’s operated for more than five decades, Bread of Life Mission Inc.

    “I take care of people that fall through the crack in the system,” she said. “You have people who were on their feet but because of the hurricane, they’re on their knees.”

    Cheryl Wiese isn’t homeless: For 16 years she spent the fall and winter months in her modest mobile home on Oyster Bay Lane, located at Fort Myers Beach, before returning to a place on Lake Erie in Ohio for the summer. But what she found after making the 24-hour drive south following Ian all but ruined her.

    “I don’t want to even live here anymore. There is no Fort Myers Beach. All my neighbors are gone. All my friends are gone,” she said.

    The worst part, she said, might have been driving past the devastation to the public library to begin the process of applying for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A worker told her to be ready for a phone call and visit from a FEMA representative, and not to miss either, Wiese said.

    “If I miss the phone call? Out of luck,” she said. “If I miss him? Out of luck.”

    Danilo Mendoza, a construction worker from the Miami area whose trailer and tools were blown away by Ian, has seen the places where people are going on with life, where the recovery already is underway, but he’s doing his best to stay positive.

    He counts himself fortunate because he has a safe place to stay at the hockey arena, which is located across the street from upscale apartments where people go on morning walks in athletic gear, and the food is abundant.

    “I see the big picture,” he said. “They give you blankets, for God’s sake, brand new ones. They give you all the things you need to survive.”

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  • Forecasters tracking new storm for Alaska’s Arctic coast

    Forecasters tracking new storm for Alaska’s Arctic coast

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    JUNEAU, Alaska — A fall storm packing strong winds damaged roofs and windows in parts of western and northwest Alaska and resulted in flooding of roads in the far northern city of Utqiagvik, according to damage reports, with a new storm expected to hit the Arctic coast this week.

    Water levels dropped by midday Saturday across the region, said Jonathan Chriest, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

    The system forecasters are tracking is expected to bring elevated surf and strong winds to the Arctic coast Tuesday through Thursday, though water levels and winds weren’t expected to be as high as with the last storm, he said Sunday.

    There commonly are strong storms in northern and western Alaska between September and December, he said. But the storm that just hit parts of western and northwest Alaska and the remnants of Typhoon Merbok, which caused widespread damage in parts of western Alaska last month, were “exceptionally strong” for the areas that each impacted, he said.

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  • Ian leaves scenes of recovery, despair on Florida coast

    Ian leaves scenes of recovery, despair on Florida coast

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    FORT MYERS, Fla. — Just days after Hurricane Ian struck, a crowd of locals gathered under a huge banyan tree at a motel’s outdoor tiki bar for drink specials and live music. Less than 10 miles away, crews were finishing the search for bodies on a coastal barrier island. Even closer, entire families were trying to get comfortable for the night in a mass shelter housing more than 500 storm victims.

    On a coast where a few miles meant the difference between life and death, relief and ruin, the contrasting scenes of reality less than two weeks since the hurricane‘s onslaught are jarring, and they point to the way disaster can mean so many different things to different people.

    Arlan Fuller has seen the disparity while working in the hurricane zone to serve marginalized communities with Project Hope, a nonprofit that provides medical relief services. A few factors seem to account for the vast differences from one place to the next, he said: People and places closest to the coast usually fared the worst, as did people with lower incomes.

    “There’s an interesting combination of location, the sturdiness of the structure people lived in, and means,” said Fuller.

    On Pine Island, where the state quickly erected a temporary bridge to replace one washed out by the storm, volunteers are handing out water, ice, food and supplies. The island’s Publix grocery store reopened with generator power faster than seemed possible, pleasing island resident Charlotte Smith, who didn’t evacuate.

    “My home is OK. The lower level did flood somewhat. But I’m dry. They have the water back on running. Things are really getting pretty good.” Smith said.

    Life is very different for Shanika Caldwell, 40, who took her nine children to a mass shelter located inside Hertz Arena, a minor league hockey coliseum, after another shelter located at a public high school shut down so classes could get ready to resume. The family was living in a motel before the storm but had to flee after the roof flew off, she said.

    “If they say they are going to start school next week, how am I going to get my kids back and forth from school all the way here?” she said Saturday. Nearby, a huge silver statue of an ice hockey player looked out over the arena parking lot.

    Ian, a strong Category 4 storm with 155 mph (249 kph) winds, was blamed for more than 100 deaths, the overwhelming majority of them in southwest Florida. It was the third-deadliest storm to hit the U.S. mainland this century behind Hurricane Katrina, which left about 1,400 people dead, and Hurricane Sandy, which had a total death count of 233 despite weakening to a tropical storm just before it made landfall.

    For some, the recovery has been fairly quick. Barber shops, car washes, chain restaurants, a gun range and vape shops — lots of vape shops — already have reopened on U.S. 41, known in southern Florida as the Tamiami Trail. Many traffic lights are operating, yet residents of low-lying homes and mobile home parks just off the highway are still shoveling mud that was left behind by floodwaters.

    In Punta Gorda, near where boutiques and investment firms do business along a tony street lined by palm trees, Judy Jones, 74, is trying to provide for more than 40 residents of the bare-bones homeless shelter she’s operated for more than five decades, Bread of Life Mission Inc.

    “I take care of people that fall through the crack in the system,” she said. “You have people who were on their feet but because of the hurricane, they’re on their knees.”

    Cheryl Wiese isn’t homeless: For 16 years she spent the fall and winter months in her modest mobile home on Oyster Bay Lane, located at Fort Myers Beach, before returning to a place on Lake Erie in Ohio for the summer. But what she found after making the 24-hour drive south following Ian all but ruined her.

    “I don’t want to even live here anymore. There is no Fort Myers Beach. All my neighbors are gone. All my friends are gone,” she said.

    The worst part, she said, might have been driving past the devastation to the public library to begin the process of applying for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A worker told her to be ready for a phone call and visit from a FEMA representative, and not to miss either, Wiese said.

    “If I miss the phone call? Out of luck,” she said. “If I miss him? Out of luck.”

    Danilo Mendoza, a construction worker from the Miami area whose trailer and tools were blown away by Ian, has seen the places where people are going on with life, where the recovery already is underway, but he’s doing his best to stay positive.

    He counts himself fortunate because he has a safe place to stay at the hockey arena, which is located across the street from upscale apartments where people go on morning walks in athletic gear, and the food is abundant.

    “I see the big picture,” he said. “They give you blankets, for God’s sake, brand new ones. They give you all the things you need to survive.”

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  • Opinion: Biden’s eye-opening warning | CNN

    Opinion: Biden’s eye-opening warning | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Sign up to get this weekly column as a newsletter. We’re looking back at the strongest, smartest opinion takes of the week from CNN and other outlets.



    CNN
     — 

    “Can you tell me where we’re headin’?” Bob Dylan asks in his 1978 song “Señor.”

    Is it “Lincoln County Road or Armageddon? Seems like I been down this way before. Is there any truth in that, señor?”

    Yes, we’ve been here before, at least if you take President Joe Biden at his word. At a fundraiser in New York City Thursday, Biden said, “First time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat of the use (of a) nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they are going.” Referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat to go nuclear in his war with Ukraine, the President observed, “I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily (use) a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”

    As historian Julian Zelizer wrote, “Those were unsettling words for a nation to hear from the commander in chief.” Biden referred to “the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, when the world seemed to teeter on the brink of nuclear war as the US and the Soviet Union faced off over missiles in Cuba.”

    “Some planned escape routes from major cities while others stocked up on transistor radios, bottled water and radiation kits for their families. Although nobody knew it at the time, the danger was even greater than most thought as the leaders didn’t have full control of the situation. In the end, diplomacy won out, a deal was reached and disaster was averted.”

    Nick Anderson/Tribune Content Agency

    But the prospect of annihilating humanity in a nuclear exchange is so great that such brinksmanship should never be allowed to happen again. Surely Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev were right when they agreed in 1985 that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

    US national security officials privately said there was no new intelligence to indicate that Putin is moving to carry out his threat and couldn’t explain why Biden made the extraordinary statement. But its implications were clear, Zelizer argued. “This historic moment in the war between Russia and Ukraine is an important reminder that the US has let nuclear arms control fall from the agenda, and the consequences are dangerous.”

    Putin’s back is against the wall as Ukraine continues to retake territory from the Russians. Peter Bergen wrote that Putin is “facing growing criticism from Russians on both the left and the right, who are taking considerable risks given the draconian penalties they can face for speaking out against his ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine.”

    “With even his allies expressing concern, and hundreds of thousands of citizens fleeing partial mobilization, an increasingly isolated Putin has once again taken to making rambling speeches offering his distorted view of history.”

    One lesson of history is that military defeat endangers dictatorial leaders. “Putin’s gamble may lead to a third dissolution of the Russian empire, which happened first in 1917 as the First World War wound down, and again in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union,” Bergen noted. “It could unfold once more as Putin’s dream of seizing Ukraine seems to be coming to an inglorious end.”

    It’s striking to recall, as Frida Ghitis did, that “seven months ago, some viewed Putin as something of a genius. That myth has turned to dust. The man who helped suppress uprisings, entered wars and tried to manipulate elections across the planet now looks cornered.”

    In Ukraine, “Russia’s trajectory looks like a trail of war crimes, with hundreds of bombed hospitals, schools, civilian convoys, and mass graves filled with Ukrainians. And still Ukraine is pushing ahead, is doing very well in fact, and very possibly winning this war,” wrote Ghitis.

    06 opinion column 1008

    Lisa Benson/GoComics.com

    Biden took heat this summer for deciding to meet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and walking away with little commitment from the Saudis to expand oil production. And then last week, the Saudi regime was instrumental in OPEC+’s decision to actually cut oil production in a move that benefits it and other oil-producing states including Russia.

    “So much for cozying up to the Saudis – President Joe Biden’s much-hyped fist bump with Mohammed bin Salman during a trip to the Middle East back in July has turned into something of a slap across the face from the crown prince,” wrote David A. Andelman.

    In the US, gasoline prices have started rising after weeks of declines, adding to the burdens Democrats face in trying to hold onto control of Congress in the midterm elections a month from now.

    07 opinion column 1008

    Clay Jones

    “The OPEC production cutbacks could – indeed, should – backfire for Saudi Arabia and its complicit partners,” wrote Andelman. “There is growing sentiment in Congress to reevaluate America’s wider relationship with Saudi Arabia and especially the vast arms sales to the kingdom.”

    Higher oil prices come on top of Europe’s emerging energy crisis, with Russia sharply reducing its export of natural gas to the continent. As a result, Germany is among the nations that have instituted tough new curbs on energy use, wrote Paul Hockenos.

    “Step into my Berlin office today and you’ll find everybody is wearing sweaters – I wear two, with wool socks and occasionally a scarf. … At home, my little family has sworn off baths (swift showers please), and lights are on only in the rooms we’re occupying. We’ve invested in a wool curtain inside our apartment’s front door to keep out the draft.”

    “My friend Bill … hasn’t turned his heating on yet this year – no one I know has – and wears a sweater at home. He also has a new method of showering: one minute under warm water, turns it off, lathers up, and then rinses off.”

    “Timing is everything,” said Garrett Hedlund in the 2011 song of that name.

    “When the stars line up

    And you catch a break

    People think you’re lucky

    But you know it’s grace…”

    It works in reverse too. Just ask Linda Stewart, a New Mexico educator in her 60s who decided to retire one year into the pandemic lockdown. “Finances would be a little tight for a while, but some outside projects would supplement my income, so I felt confident I would be able to handle it,” she wrote in a new CNN Opinion series, “America’s Future Starts Now,” which explores the key issues in the midterm campaigns.

    But, Stewart added, “by the end of the second year of lockdown, inflation started taking a toll and money was getting uncomfortably tight. Soon I was in the red each month, just trying to keep up. The usual suspects were groceries and gas, which meant cutting back on some of the more expensive food items and cooking meals at home.”

    “I stopped driving for anything other than essentials. And with the continuing drought here in the Southwest, utility bills went through the ceiling. I cut back on watering my garden and turned the furnace down a few degrees in the winter and the air conditioning up a few in the summer. I switched to washing clothes mostly in cold water and only running the dishwasher once a week.”

    The economy is the issue Americans are most concerned about, and there are no quick, easy solutions to the inflation spike. The second part of CNN Opinion’s new series was a roundup of views on how to help people cope with higher costs.

    03 opinion column 1008

    Scott Stantis/Tribune Content Agency

    The Federal Reserve Bank is raising interest rates at a rapid pace to conquer inflation. The “tight labor market – and the rapid wage growth it has spurred – is causing inflation to become more entrenched,” wrote economist Gad Levanon for CNN Business Perspectives. To curb the rise in prices, “the Federal Reserve is likely to drive the economy into a recession in 2023, crushing continued job growth.”

    05 opinion column 1008

    Dana Summers/Tribune Content Agency

    At least 131 people have died due to Hurricane Ian. Why was it so deadly?

    The storm’s course veered south as it approached Florida and rapidly intensified, Cara Cuite and Rebecca Morss noted. “Emergency managers typically need at least 48 hours to successfully evacuate areas of southwest Florida. However, voluntary evacuation orders for Lee County were issued less than 48 hours prior to landfall, and for some areas were made mandatory just 24 hours before the storm came ashore. This was less than the amount of time outlined in Lee County’s own emergency management plan.”

    “While the lack of sufficient time to evacuate was cited by some as a reason why they stayed behind, there are other factors that may also have suppressed evacuations in some of the hardest hit areas.” Few people are aware of their evacuation zone, and some websites carrying that information crashed in the leadup to the storm’s arrival, Cuite and Morss wrote.

    “People need time to decide what to do, pack belongings, find a place to go and arrange how to get there, often in the midst of heavy traffic and other complications and obstacles.” Other factors: “In addition to a false sense of security from prior near-misses among some residents, others who were in the areas of Florida hardest hit by Hurricane Ian may not have had any personal experience with such powerful storms. This is likely true for the millions of people who have moved to Florida over the past few decades…”

    For more:

    Adam H. Sobel: Where the hurricane risk is growing

    Geoff Duncan, a Republican and the current lieutenant governor of Georgia, is unsure about Herschel Walker’s prospects in the upcoming election. The Republican Senate candidate has denied reports alleging he paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009.

    “The October surprise,” Duncan wrote, “has upended the political landscape, throwing one of the nation’s closest midterm races into turmoil five weeks before Election Day, but it never had to be this way. Just as there should not be two Democrats representing a center-right state like Georgia in the US Senate, the Republican Party should not have found its chance of regaining a Senate majority hanging on an untested and unproven first-time candidate.”

    “Walker won his Senate primary not because of his political chops or policy proposals. He trounced his opponents because of his performance on the football field 40 years ago and his friendship with former President Donald Trump – neither of which are guaranteed tickets to victory anymore.”

    02 opinion column 1008

    Drew Sheneman/Tribune Content Agency

    For more on politics:

    SE Cupp: Herschel Walker’s ‘October Surprise’ won’t matter

    Tim Kane: What the Biden administration is getting wrong on immigration

    Nicole Hemmer: The Onion is right about the future of democracy

    Dean Obeidallah: The single-minded goal of Trump-loving Republicans

    Organic chemistry is a famously difficult course and a traditional prerequisite for students who want to go on to medical school. Maitland Jones Jr., a master of the field and textbook author, taught the course at NYU – until 82 of the 350 students taking it “signed a petition because, they said, their low scores demonstrated that his class was too hard,” Jill Filipovic noted.

    Then the university fired him.

    An NYU spokesman “told the (New York) Times in defense of their decision to terminate Jones’s contract that the professor had been the target of complaints about ‘dismissiveness, unresponsiveness, condescension and opacity about grading.’ It’s worth noting that according to the Times, students expressed surprise that Jones was fired, which their petition did not call for.”

    Some of the student complaints may have been valid, noted Filipovic, but she added that the case “raises important questions, chief among them how much power students, who universities seem to increasingly think of as consumers (and some of whom think of themselves that way), should have in the hiring, retention and firing of professors…”

    “There are real consequences … to making higher education primarily palatable to those paying tuition bills – particularly when it comes to courses like organic chemistry, which are intended to be difficult. Future medical students do in fact need a rigorous science background in order to be successful doctors someday. Whether or not Jones was an effective teacher for aspiring medical students is up for debate, but in firing him, NYU is effectively dodging questions about the line between academic rigor and student well-being with potentially life-and-death matters at stake.”

    Kim Kardashian 0924

    Alessandro Garofalo/Reuters

    The Securities and Exchange Commission fined Kim Kardashian nearly $1.3 million for failing to disclose she was paid to promote a crypto asset, EthereumMax, noted Emily Parker.

    “This case reflects a much larger problem in the crypto industry: Celebrities are using their influence to promote cryptocurrencies, a notoriously complex and risky asset class, which can lead people to invest in coins or projects that they may not understand,” Parker observed.

    “New coins and projects are constantly popping up, sometimes without sufficient warnings about the risks of investing … In such a fast-changing and confusing market, how do you distinguish winners from losers? It’s easy to imagine how a confident tweet by a celebrity could have a significant impact on a new investor.”

    In agreeing to the fine, Kardashian “did a favor for the cryptocurrency industry. Such a high-profile example could cause other celebrities to think twice before shilling a token on social media.”

    04 opinion column 1008

    Bill Bramhall/Tribune Content Agency

    Alejandro Mayorkas: The security risk Congress needs to take seriously

    Danae Wolfe: Stomping alone won’t wipe out the spotted lanternfly

    Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza: Inside the prison where sunlight ceases to exist

    Jeremi Suri and William Inboden: A generation of the world’s best leaders has died

    Sara Stewart: ‘Dahmer’ debate is finally saying the quiet part about true crime out loud

    Elisa Massimino: It’s time to shut down Guantanamo

    Pete Brown: What ‘fancy a pint?’ really means

    AND…

    01 Trevor Noah file

    Rich Fury/Getty Images/FILE`

    Until recently, the late-night television formula ruled, as Bill Carter noted. “On the air after 11 p.m. with a charismatic host, some comedy, a desk, a guest or two, maybe a band and then ‘Good night, everybody!’” Late-night shows seemed to be holding their own despite the rise of cord-cutting and the move to streaming.

    But that’s changing, as Trevor Noah’s decision to give up hosting “The Daily Show” suggested. Carter wrote, “What many people watch now is not television: It’s whatever-vision, entertainment by any means on any device. What’s on late night is now often seen on subscriptions – and not late at night.”

    Noah is leaving on a high note “after a seven-year run, marked by an impressive body of comedy work and growing acclaim,” Carter observed. In succeeding Jon Stewart as the show’s host, Noah “had a different beat in his head from the start. He wanted to refashion the show with a wider comedy vision, one looking more out at the world, instead of purely in at the United States, all informed by Noah’s South African-born global perspective.”

    “It was a wise choice. Following Stewart was always going to be a potentially crippling challenge. Noah took it on and remade the show to his own specifications. One major sign of that was how strikingly diverse the show became.”

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  • Hurricane Julia bears down on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast

    Hurricane Julia bears down on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast

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    MEXICO CITY — Hurricane Julia bore down on Nicaragua’s central Caribbean coast early Sunday after lashing Colombia’s San Andres island in a close pass-by hours earlier.

    Julia started Saturday as a tropical storm, but gained power most of the day and became a Category 1 hurricane shortly before it veered slightly south of San Andres island in the early evening.

    The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Julia’s maximum sustained winds had stabilized around 75 mph (120 kph) late Saturday. It was centered about 80 miles (130 kilometers) east-northeast of Bluefields, Nicaragua, and was moving west at 16 mph (26 kph), with landfall on the Nicaraguan coast expected before dawn.

    Colombian President Gustavo Petro had declared a “maximum alert” on San Andres as well as Providencia island to the north and asked hotels to prepare space to shelter the vulnerable population. Officials on San Andres imposed a curfew for residents at 6 a.m. Saturday to limit people in the streets. Air operations to the islands were suspended.

    There were no early reports on what effects the storm had in San Andres.

    In Nicaragua, authorities issued an alert for all types of vessels to seek safe harbor as the hurricane followed a general path toward the area of Bluefields and Laguna de Perlas.

    Guillermo González, director of Nicaragua’s Disaster Response System, told official media that people at high risk had been evacuated from coastal areas by noon Saturday. The army said it delivered humanitarian supplies to Bluefields and Laguna de Perlas for distribution to 118 temporary shelters.

    In Bluefields, however, life appeared little changed Saturday night, and people expressed reluctance to leave their homes.

    Forecasters said a greater threat than Julia’s winds were rains of 5 to 10 inches (13 to 25 centimeters) — up to 15 inches (38 centimeters) in isolated areas — that the storm was expected to dump across Central America.

    “This rainfall may cause life-threatening flash floods and mudslides through this weekend,” the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

    The storm’s remnants were forecast to sweep across Nicaragua and then skirt along the Pacific coasts of El Salvador and Guatemala, a region already saturated by weeks of heavy rains.

    In Guatemala, officials said Julia could drench 10 departments in the east, center and west of the country — an area that has been most affected by this rainy season and where the poorest people are concentrated.

    From May to September, storms have caused 49 confirmed deaths and six people are missing. Roads and hundreds of homes have been damaged, Guatemalan officials say.

    In El Salvador, where 19 people have died this rainy season, the worst rainfall is expected Monday and Tuesday, said Fernando López, the minister of environmenta and natural resources. Officials said they had opened 61 shelters with the capacity to house more than 3,000 people.

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  • Residents allowed to return to Florida island slammed by Ian

    Residents allowed to return to Florida island slammed by Ian

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    FORT MYERS, Fla. — Residents were allowed to return to a coastal island that was decimated by Hurricane Ian on Saturday with a warning from the governor that the disaster isn’t over.

    Many of the homes still standing on Estero Island lack basic services, so portable restrooms, hand-washing stations, shower trailers and other essentials were trucked in for residents who want to stay, Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a news conference. Debris still has to be removed before rebuilding can begin.

    “There’s a lot more to do, and really some of the hardest stuff is still ahead of us,” DeSantis said.

    While residents were initially allowed back on the island after the storm, officials shut down access to allow teams to finish searching the wreckage building by building for possible victims. Once the work was done, residents lined up and were allowed to return on buses.

    Shana Dam went to see what was left of her parents’ house.

    “It’s gone,” she told the Fort Myers News-Press. “It’s just gone.”

    Just getting around the island, home to most of Fort Myers Beach, is difficult because of storm debris, but heavy equipment was used to clear roads.

    With handmade signs all over the area warning that looters will be shot by homeowners, Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said only nine such theft cases had been reported.

    Ian, a high-end Category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of 155 mph (249 kph) at landfall, was the third-deadliest storm to hit the mainland United States this century behind Hurricane Katrina, which left about 1,400 people dead, and Hurricane Sandy, which had a total death count of 233 despite weakening to a tropical storm just before it made U.S. landfall.

    State officials have reported 94 storm-related deaths in Florida so far and most were in Lee County, which includes the Fort Myers area and nearby Gulf Coast islands including Estero.

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  • Tropical Storm Julia strengthens as it heads for Nicaragua

    Tropical Storm Julia strengthens as it heads for Nicaragua

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    MEXICO CITY — Tropical Storm Julia gained more strength moving westward in the southern Caribbean on Saturday as authorities prepared for a possible hurricane on Colombian islands and in Nicaragua.

    Julia’s maximum sustained winds had increased to 70 mph (110 kph) Saturday afternoon, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. The storm was centered about 55 miles (90 kilometers) east of Providencia Island and moving west at 17 mph (28 kph).

    Julia was forecast to pass near or over Colombia’s San Andres and Providencia islands Saturday night on its way to landfall in Nicaragua on Sunday morning.

    Colombian President Gustavo Petro declared a “maximum alert” on the islands and asked hotels to prepare space to shelter the vulnerable population. Officials on San Andres imposed a curfew for residents at 6 a.m. Saturday to limit people in the streets. Air operations to the islands were suspended.

    Similar precautions were underway in the central area of Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast, where authorities issued an alert for all types of vessels to seek safe harbor.

    Nicaraguan soldiers began preparing the evacuation of inhabitants of islands and cays around the town of Sandy Bay Sirpi. The army said it delivered humanitarian supplies to the municipalities of Bluefields and Laguna de Perlas for distribution to 118 temporary shelters.

    Forecasters said a greater threat than Julia’s winds were rains of 5 to 10 inches (13 to 25 centimeters) — up to 15 inches (38 centimeters) in isolated areas — that the storm was expected to dump across Central America.

    “This rainfall may cause life-threatening flash floods and mudslides through this weekend,” the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

    The storm’s remnants were forecast to sweep across Nicaragua and then skirt by the Pacific coasts of El Salvador and Guatemala, a region already saturated by weeks of heavy rains.

    In Guatemala, officials said Julia could drench 10 departments in the east, center and west of the country — an area that has been most affected by this rainy season and where the poorest people are concentrated.

    From May to September, storms have caused 49 confirmed deaths and six people are missing. Roads and hundreds of homes have been damaged, Guatemalan officials say.

    In El Salvador, where 19 people have died this rainy season, the worst rainfall is expected Monday and Tuesday, said Fernando López, the minister of environmenta and natural resources. Officials said they had opened 61 shelters with the capacity to house more than 3,000 people.

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  • Undaunted by DeSantis, immigrant workers are heading to Florida to help with hurricane cleanup | CNN

    Undaunted by DeSantis, immigrant workers are heading to Florida to help with hurricane cleanup | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Just weeks after Ron DeSantis made a very public display of his efforts to keep migrants from coming to Florida, Hurricane Ian’s destruction is drawing a growing number of immigrants to the Republican governor’s state.

    “They’re arriving from New York, from Louisiana, from Houston and Dallas,” says Saket Soni, executive director of the nonprofit Resilience Force, which advocates for thousands of disaster response workers. The group is made up largely of immigrants, many of whom are undocumented, Soni says. Much like migrant workers who follow harvest seasons and travel from farm to farm, Soni says these workers crisscross the US to help clean up and rebuild when disaster strikes.

    To describe their work, he likes to use a metaphor he says a Mexican roofer once shared with him.

    “What you have now is basically immigrants who are sort of traveling white blood cells of America, who congregate after hurricanes to heal a place, and then move on to heal the next place,” Soni says.

    Already, Soni says his team has been in the Fort Myers area with hundreds of immigrant workers – about half of whom came from out of state. And he says more will arrive in the coming weeks.

    He calls it a “moment of interdependence.” And he says it’s something he hopes DeSantis and others in Florida will recognize.

    “Many who were traveling in the opposite direction weeks ago are now traveling to Florida to help rebuild,” he says.

    And each morning when they wake up, he says, many migrants have told him they are praying for DeSantis.

    “They’re praying for him to lead a good recovery, they’re praying for him to be the best governor he can be. Because they need him and he needs them. And they know that,” Soni says.

    Does DeSantis?

    “There’s no way that he doesn’t,” Soni says.

    But so far, the Florida governor’s words and actions tell a different story.

    Back in 2018, DeSantis campaigned for governor with a TV ad showing him teaching his kids to build a wall. And since then, he’s positioned himself as one of the most vocal critics of the Biden administration’s immigration policies and announced high-profile immigration steps of his own, including – most recently – using state funds for two flights taking migrants from Texas to Florida to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

    Word that immigrants are now coming to help clean up some of his state’s most storm-ravaged communities hasn’t softened the governor’s stance.

    Several minutes into a news conference Tuesday billed as an update on the state’s hurricane response – before he detailed ongoing rescue efforts – DeSantis made a point of trumpeting that three “illegal aliens” were among four people recently arrested on looting allegations.

    “These are people that are foreigners, they’re illegally in our country, and not only that, they try to loot and ransack in the aftermath of a natural disaster. I mean, they should be prosecuted, but they need to be sent back to their home countries. They should not be here at all,” he told reporters.

    Later in the news conference, CNN’s Boris Sanchez asked DeSantis whether he had any response to reports that Venezuelans in New York were being recruited to work on recovery efforts, and whether the governor would also be trying to send those migrants back north.

    DeSantis doubled down on his earlier message.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a news conference Tuesday in Cape Coral, Florida.

    “First of all, our program that we did is a voluntary relocation program. I don’t have the authority to forcibly relocate people. If I could, I’d take those three looters, I’d drag them out by their collars, and I’d send them back to where they came from,” the governor said, drawing applause from officials surrounding him.

    He went on to describe a funeral he attended this week of a Pinellas County sheriff’s deputy who was killed in a hit and run by a front-end loader that authorities allege was driven by an undocumented Honduran immigrant.

    Then he ended the news conference, making no mention of immigrant workers who were putting tarps on roofs or clearing debris.

    Hurricane Ian is the first major hurricane to hit Florida since DeSantis took office in January 2019.

    Many migrants coming now to help rebuild, Soni says, have responded in the past to numerous major disasters in Florida and across the country.

    “Many are from Venezuela. Many are from Honduras and Mexico. They represent all of the different waves of migrants that have been arriving into the US and into this industry. Many of them who I’ve known since Hurricane Katrina and who have a dozen hurricanes under their belt,” he said. “But there are also newer migrants. I just met a group of Venezuelan asylum-seekers who were arriving to do the work.”

    The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History notes in its description of an artifact in its collection that after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, “Many homeowners undertook their own clean-up, but much was performed by immigrant laborers attracted to the region by the promise of hard work and good wages.”

    This file photo from April 2006 shows immigrant workers performing

    Sergio Chávez, an associate professor of sociology at Rice University who studies Mexican roofers, describes Katrina as a “key moment” that shaped the identities and careers of many of the hundreds of men he’s interviewed.

    A little more than half of the roofers in the group he’s studied are undocumented immigrants, Chávez says. And when he’s spoken with roofers across the United States – based in places like Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa, Ohio and Kentucky – Chávez says a common detail quickly emerges when he asks how they ended up in those locations.

    “They always name a storm,” he says.

    After Hurricane Ian, he says, many of those roofers are poised to head to Florida. Deciding exactly when to go to a disaster zone is a strategic decision, Chávez says, noting that arriving too early can be problematic.

    “There’s no telephone service, gasoline, food, housing,” he says. “They also have to be really careful not to just work for anybody, because otherwise they may not get compensated for the work that they do.”

    But there’s no doubt they’re going to Florida, he says, and that they’ll play a key role in the state’s recovery.

    “DeSantis is not scaring them away,” Chávez says.

    That doesn’t mean they won’t face some hostility once they get there, just like they have in other communities.

    “My guys for the most part do experience ‘the look.’ They do get pulled over, maybe. But for the most part, any time they go to a lot of these different locations, they are there to do work which the local population sees as essential. So they get their work done,” Chávez says.

    On the ground in communities, Chávez says he’s seen contradictions between people’s political beliefs and their actions. Some may support anti-immigrant rhetoric, he says, but then look the other way when they need certain services that immigrant workers provide.

    A bigger problem, Chávez says, is that when these workers face abuses – like wage theft or unsafe housing conditions – there aren’t enough laws to protect them, or local authorities may be hesitant to enforce them.

    On top of that, the work is physically demanding and risky.

    “These guys are helping us to adapt to a new world that we live in and we need their labor,” Chávez says. “But it turns out they actually risk their bodies. (Roofing is) one of the most dangerous occupations in the United States.”

    Damage from Hurricane Ian is seen on Tuesday in San Carlos Island, Fort Myers Beach.

    Chávez says he’s spoken with many roofers about on-the-job injuries.

    “A lot of these guys have fallen and they don’t have access to health insurance. Their bodies are no longer the same. They have bad knees, bad backs,” he says.

    So why do roofers and other disaster recovery workers keep setting out for these destinations, storm after storm?

    Even though wage theft is a major problem some face, there’s the potential to earn good wages, send their earnings to families in their home country and possibly advance to higher-paying jobs over time, Chávez says. So it’s a choice that makes economic sense to many, despite the risks.

    Desperation is also a factor, Soni says.

    “Part of what’s happened is because this is such dirty, dangerous work, and the conditions are so harsh, the most desperate people – those with no other economic avenues, those who are willing to be transient for a year or more – are the ones who join,” he says.

    When it comes to the physical and economic risks, Soni says Resilience Force does what it can to protect workers by helping them negotiate fair wages and payment with contractors, and making sure they have the right safety equipment as they set out to rebuild homes and schools.

    But those aren’t the only construction projects they’ll be working on in Florida, Soni says.

    “We also try to rebuild a society that’s better than it was before the storm,” he says. “And it’s better when there are more relationships and there are more bonds between different people. … Politics can change when the people in a place change their minds.”

    After previous hurricanes, he says, the organization has led workers on service projects rebuilding uninsured homes, then hosted meals where homeowners and workers can talk with the help of interpreters.

    “Those bonds have lasted. People have become friends and people have changed their minds,” he says. “What that often looks like in Florida or Louisiana is for someone who thought immigration was their most important issue, well, after a hurricane, immigration becomes the 35th most important issue. And what’s more important is, how are we going to stay in this place to survive and thrive again? Who will it take? What family will it take to bring this place back? And that family usually includes the immigrants who helped rebuild the place.”

    DeSantis may not take note of this. But as Florida rebuilds, Soni is betting that community leaders and homeowners who need help will.

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  • Black residents in 2 Florida neighborhoods raise questions about hurricane relief efforts and say they’ve been left out | CNN

    Black residents in 2 Florida neighborhoods raise questions about hurricane relief efforts and say they’ve been left out | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Latronia Latson said she feels like she has been neglected in the recovery efforts from Hurricane Ian.

    Latson, who lives in the Dunbar neighborhood in Fort Myers, Florida, said she can’t get to a relief center to get bottled water and other necessities being distributed because she doesn’t have transportation; the bus system is not running in her neighborhood. Her stove and microwave also mysteriously stopped working after the hurricane, despite power being restored.

    Latson said the more affluent, predominately White communities seem to be getting prioritized in the storm recovery.

    “They need to make it convenient for those that don’t have transportation,” said Latson, who is disabled. “We just don’t get the same service (as people in other parts of town).”

    Latson is among the residents and community leaders in Florida who say the poor, majority Black neighborhoods of Dunbar and River Park in Naples are forgotten as rescue and relief teams descend on the areas hit by Hurricane Ian last week.

    The residents say they were among the last to get their power restored and shelters and relief centers are being set up too far away for people who don’t have access to vehicles.

    Officials in Fort Myers did not immediately provide a response to these concerns when contacted by CNN.

    The city of Naples released a statement on Thursday outlining its efforts to assist the River Park community since the storm. The statement said officials opened a comfort center at the River Park Community Center on Sept. 29 that provided access to phone charging, air conditioning, water, ice and restrooms. Additionally the city said staff members visited River Park to speak with residents, developed a plan for debris removal, transported residents to shelters and partnered with local groups to serve and deliver hot meals, water and clothing to the community.

    Yet Black residents’ complaints and questions about the warnings and response lay bare the racial disparities in natural disaster recovery each time a major storm affects part of the country. Several studies found that the Federal Emergency Management Agency provides less aid to people of color facing disaster relief compared to White people. Poor communities and communities of color are also often built in locations that are more physically vulnerable to extreme weather events and have less investment in their infrastructure, experts say.

    Vice President Kamala Harris acknowledged the inequity when she spoke last week at the National Committee Women’s Leadership Forum.

    “It is our lowest-income communities and our communities of color that are most impacted by these extreme conditions and impacted by issues that are not of their own making,” Harris said. “And so we have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity.”

    Deanne Criswell, FEMA administrator, agreed that there are barriers to receiving federal resources. Criswell said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” earlier this week that her office is working to create more equitable access to FEMA’s disaster relief programs.

    “One of our focus areas since I’ve been in office is to make sure that we’re removing those barriers,” Criswell said. “So these people that need our help the most are going to be able to access the help that we offer.”

    Black activists and residents in Florida are pleading for more help from officials.

    Vincent Keeys, president of the Collier County NAACP, said residents in River Park were already more vulnerable because it is a coastal community. The city of Naples, Keeys said, has worked to gentrify the area in recent years but has not built a sea wall that could provide more protection during hurricanes.

    Some residents complained that they never even received a notification to evacuate their homes ahead of the storm, Keeys said.

    The timing of evacuation orders has been a point of contention for Florida officials since the storm. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said officials in Lee County, where Dunbar sits, acted appropriately when they issued their first mandatory evacuations less than 24 hours before Hurricane Ian made landfall on the state, and a day after several neighboring counties issued their orders. Lee County officials have faced mounting questions about why the first mandatory evacuations weren’t ordered until a day before Ian’s landfall – despite an emergency plan that suggests evacuations should have happened earlier.

    The city of Naples said in its statement Thursday that it issued mandatory evacuation notices to residents via email, the CodeRed system, social media and a press release sent to media outlets.

    In River Park, many homes suffered 4 to 6 feet of flooding, downed trees and structural damage. Keeys said there are no shelters in close proximity to the neighborhood, leaving residents with nowhere to go if their homes are uninhabitable.

    “Please, you cannot put our people in a flood prone situation and expect them to survive,” Keeys said. “At least, if humanly possible, help us improve, plan and make things better for human beings.”

    Sharda Williams, of River Park, said she never received an evacuation order but people in nearby communities were told to leave. “No one came to our neighborhood and told us to get out,” Williams said. “Not one person.”

    Now Williams said all she can do is “sit and wait until the help comes through.”

    “You try and do what you can and that’s why, you know, we’re all pitching together and trying to help each other with what we can,” she said.

    Curtis Williams (no relation to Sharda), another River Park resident, was also frustrated he didn’t get an evacuation order.

    “Not one city employee, police or whatever, came through the neighborhood before the flood water and said there was a mandatory evacuation, not one,” he said. “They could have easily rode down here with a bullhorn, before the storm, and say ‘you people need to vacate.’ They didn’t do that.”

    However, Naples said in its statement that the city’s first responders were trapped and its fire station was flooded. As a result, the North Collier Fire Rescue (NCFR) team responded to the River Park community with the high water vehicle. NCFR drove three vehicle loads of residents to high ground, which was at the Coastland Center Mall. Numerous people in the area were trapped and the city said its goal was to get everyone to safety and high ground.

    More than 100 miles away in Dunbar, one pastor said while the Black community hasn’t received much support from officials, residents are leaning on each other to get through the recovery.

    “We are trying to give some moral support, you know, with our neighbors and friends,” said Pastor Nicles Emile of Galilee Baptist Church. “We are working on helping our neighbors as much as we can and I can say that whatever we have and share with them.”

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  • AP EXPLAINS: How one computer forecast model botched Ian

    AP EXPLAINS: How one computer forecast model botched Ian

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    As Hurricane Ian bore down on Florida, normally reliable computer forecast models couldn’t agree on where the killer storm would land. But government meteorologists are now figuring out what went wrong — and right.

    Much of the forecasting variation seems to be rooted in cool Canadian air that had weakened a batch of sunny weather over the East Coast. That weakening would allow Ian to turn eastward to Southwest Florida instead of north and west to the Panhandle hundreds of miles away.

    The major American computer forecast model — one of several used by forecasters — missed that and the error was “critical,” a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration postmortem of computer forecast models determined Thursday.

    “It’s pretty clear that error is very consequential,” said former NOAA chief scientist Ryan Maue, now a private meteorologist who wasn’t part of NOAA’s postmortem.

    Still, meteorologists didn’t miss overall with their official Hurricane Ian forecast. Ian’s eventual southwestern Florida landfall was always within the “cone of uncertainty” of the National Hurricane Center’s forecast track, although at times it was on the farthest edge.

    But it wasn’t that simple. Computer forecast models, which weeks earlier had agreed on where Hurricane Fiona was going, were hundreds of miles apart as Ian chugged through the Caribbean.

    The normally reliable American computer model, which had performed better than any other model in 2021 and was doing well earlier in the year, kept forecasting a Florida Panhandle landfall while the European model — long a favorite of many meteorologists — and the British simulation were pointing to Tampa or farther south.

    Trying to avoid what meteorologists call the dreaded “windshield wiper effect” of dramatic hurricane path shifts, the official NOAA forecast stayed somewhere in between. Tampa — with lots of people and land vulnerable to gigantic storm surges — seemed to be the center of possible landfalls, or even worse just south of the eye so it would get the biggest surge.

    Although people’s fears focused on Tampa, Ian didn’t.

    The storm made landfall 89 miles (143 kilometers) to the south in Cayo Costa. For a large storm, that’s not a big difference and is within the 100-mile (161-kilometer) error bar NOAA sets. But because Tampa was north of the nasty right-side of the hurricane eye, it was spared the biggest storm surge and rainfall.

    People wondered why the worst didn’t happen. There are meteorological, computer and communications reasons.

    Overall, the European computer model performed best, the British one had the closest eventual Florida landfall but was too slow in timing and the American model had the highest errors when it came to track, NOAA’s Alicia Bentley said during the agency’s postmortem. But the American model was the best at getting Ian’s strength right, she said.

    University of Albany meteorology professor Brian Tang said he calculated the American model’s average track error during Ian at 325 miles (520 kilometers) five-days out, while the European model was closer to 220 miles (350 kilometers).

    “A lot of what we notice in the public is when there are big misses and those big misses affect people in populated areas,” Tang said in an interview.

    Although this is technically not a miss, people who evacuated Tampa may think it is because the Fort Myers area got the brunt of the storm.

    In some ways people are spoiled because the average track error in hurricane forecasts have gotten so much better. The three-day official forecast error was cut nearly in half over the last 10 years from 172 miles (278 kilometers) to 92 miles (148 kilometers), Tang said.

    For years meteorologists touted the European model as better, because it uses more observations, is more complex but also takes longer to run and comes out later than the American one, Tang said. The American model has improved after a big boost of NOAA spending, but so has the European one, he added.

    The models use a similar physics formula to simulate what happens in the atmosphere. They usually rely on the same observations, more or less. But where they differ is how all those observations are put into the computer models, what kind of uncertainties are added and the timing of when the simulation starts, said University of Miami’s Brian McNoldy.

    “You are guaranteed to end up differently,” McNoldy said.

    It’s not a problem if the models show similar tracks. But if they are widely different, as during Ian, “that makes you nervous,” he said.

    People wrongly focus on funnel-like cone for where the hurricane is forecast to go instead of what it will do in specific locations, said MIT meteorology professor Kerry Emanuel. And in the cone people only pay attention to the middle line not the broader picture, so Emanuel and McNoldy want the line dropped.

    Another problem meteorologists say is that the cone is only where the storm is supposed to be with a 100-mile (161-kilometer) error radius, but when storms are big like Ian, their impacts of rain, surge and high wind will easily hit outside the cone.

    “The cone was never intended to convey the actual impacts. It was only intended to convey the tracks,” said Gina Eosco, who heads a NOAA social science program that tries to improve storm communications.

    So for the first time, NOAA surveyed Florida, Georgia and South Carolina residents before Ian hit and will follow up after to see what risks the public perceived from the media and government information. That will help the agency decide if it has to change its warning messaging, Eosco said.

    ———

    Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

    ———

    Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears

    ———

    Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • After Ian, coastal residents return to pick up the pieces

    After Ian, coastal residents return to pick up the pieces

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    SANIBEL ISLAND, Fla. — Rotting fish and garbage lie scattered in Sanibel Island’s streets. On the mainland, debris from washed-away homes is heaped in a canal like matchsticks. Huge shrimp boats sit perched amid the remains of a mobile home park.

    “Think of a snow globe. Pick it up and shake it — that’s what happened,” said Fred Szott.

    For the past three days, he and his wife Joyce have been making trips to their damaged mobile home in Fort Myers to begin cleaning up after Hurricane Ian slammed into Florida’s Gulf Coast.

    As for the emotional turbulence, he says: “You either hold on, or you lose it.”

    Just offshore, residents of Florida’s devastated barrier islands are also returning to assess the damage to homes and businesses, despite limited access to some areas.

    The broken causeway to Sanibel Island might not be passable until the end of the month. In the meantime, residents like Pamela Brislin arrived by boat to see what they could salvage.

    Brislin stayed through the storm, but is haunted by what happened afterward. When she checked on a neighbor, she found the woman crying. Her husband had passed away, his body laid out on a picnic table until help could arrive. Another neighbor’s house caught fire. The flames were so large that they forced Breslin to do what the hurricane could not — flee with her husband and a neighbor’s dog.

    Ian, a Category 4 storm with sustained winds of 150 miles per hour (240 kilometers per hour), unleashed torrents of rain and caused extensive flooding and damage. The deluge turned streets into gushing rivers. Backyard waterways overflowed into neighborhoods, sometimes by more than a dozen feet (3.5 meters), tossing boats onto yards and roadways. Beaches disappeared, as ocean surges pushed shorelines far inland.

    Sanibel Island had ordered a complete curfew after the storm passed, allowing search and rescue teams to do their work. That meant residents who evacuated the island were technically blocked from returning.

    But the city of about 7,000 started allowing residents back from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Wednesday. City manager Dana Souza told residents in a Facebook Live stream that he wished the municipality had resources to provide transportation but that, for now, residents would have to arrange visits by private boat.

    Pine Island is closer to the mainland than Sanibel, but it too was hit hard by the storm.

    Cindy Bickford’s house was still standing. Much of the damage was from the flooding, which left a thick layer of rancid muck on her floors.

    “It’s not our stuff we’re worried about. It’s our community. Pine Island is extremely close-knit,” said Bickford, who arrived Thursday for the first time.

    She was hopeful that much could be salvaged.

    “We’ll tear the home apart so we can live in it,” said Bickford, who wore a T-shirt that said “Relax,” “Refresh” and “Renew.”

    The storm caused billions of dollars in damage and killed dozens of people, the majority of victims in Florida. Even a week after it passed through, officials warn that more dead could still be found as they continued to inspect the damage.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, at a news conference Thursday in the Sarasota County town of Nokomis, trumpeted the widespread restoration of running water through the storm-hit zone and the work toward restoring power. Some 185,000 customers remain without electricity, down from highs above 2.6 million across the state.

    He said rescue workers have conducted around 2,500 missions, particularly on barrier islands on the Gulf coast as well as in inland areas that have seen intense flooding. More than 90,000 structures have been inspected and checked for survivors, he said.

    He said residents areas devastated by the hurricane had been showing great resilience over the past week.

    President Joe Biden toured some of Florida’s hurricane-hit areas on Wednesday, surveying damage by helicopter and then walking on foot alongside DeSantis. The Democratic president and Republican governor pledged to put political rivalries aside to help rebuild homes, businesses and lives. Biden emphasized at a briefing with local officials that the effort could take years.

    At least 98 storm-related deaths have been reported, 89 of them in Florida. In hardest-hit Lee County, Florida, the vast majority of people killed by the hurricane were over age 50.

    Five people were also killed in North Carolina, three in Cuba and one in Virginia since Ian made landfall on the Caribbean island Sept. 27, a day before it reached Florida. After roaring northeast across Florida and into the Atlantic, the hurricane made another landfall in South Carolina before pushing into the mid-Atlantic states.

    ———

    Calvan reported from Pine Island, Florida. Associated Press writers Anthony Izaguirre in Tallahassee and Ian Mader in Miami contributed to this report.

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  • Sanibel Island residents return to see if their homes survived devastating Hurricane Ian as Biden surveys damage | CNN

    Sanibel Island residents return to see if their homes survived devastating Hurricane Ian as Biden surveys damage | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Residents of Florida’s Sanibel Island are warned they could be shocked when they return by boat Wednesday to their hard-hit community to set eyes for the first time on the devastation wrought a week ago by Hurricane Ian whose damage zone President Joe Biden is also due to visit today.

    “It is going to be emotional when they see their properties up close and the amount of damage that this storm inflicted upon them,” City Manager Dana Souza told CNN of how residents and business owners may react on Sanibel Island, where Ian wiped out parts of the causeway, severing its connection to the mainland.

    The opening of Sanibel to residents comes the same day President Joe Biden is visiting Florida to see Ian’s destruction first-hand. The President, who received an aerial tour of the damage in Fort Myers, was also briefed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Florida officials on the response to the storm and recovery efforts.

    “Today we have one job and only one job,” Biden said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. “That’s to make sure the people of Florida get everything that they need to fully, thoroughly recover.”

    FOLLOW LIVE UPDATES

    At least 110 people have been reported killed as a result of the storm – 105 of them in Florida and five in North Carolina. And it’s not clear how many people are still missing as officials work to compile a list of those who remain unaccounted for, Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said Monday.

    More than 1,000 search and rescue personnel have combed through 79,000 structures across the Sunshine State, DeSantis told reporters Tuesday, with more than 2,300 rescues logged.

    Statewide, about 290,000 customers still have no power Wednesday, according to PowerOutage.us, many of them in hard-hit Lee and Charlotte counties. Many schools also remain shuttered, some hospitals are still struggling to provide care, and boil-water notices remain in place in some areas.

    DeSantis toured the damage on Sanibel Wednesday for the first time. “You can go over it in a helicopter and you see damage, but it does not do it justice until you are actually on the ground, and you see concrete utility poles sawed off right in half, massive power lines everywhere, massive amounts of debris,” he said.

    As Sanibel Island residents access their properties, the area is still “extremely unsafe,” Mayor Holly Smith said. And houses that look fine from the outside may prove to be too damaged to live in.

    Wednesday was the first time Julie Emig, 64, and Vicki Paskaly, 68, returned to their home on the island. The couple – who have been married since 2020, but together since 1992 – bought their “dream home” two years ago and initially evacuated thinking they would be gone for just three days.

    “Pulling up here we can already see the vegetation is in tatters. It’s really hitting home now,” Vicki told CNN as she and her partner pulled up to their home by boat.

    The couple’s garage was full of mud. Lines on the wall show water downstairs reached about 6 feet, and on their lower level, the refrigerator was now on the counter and the kitchen island was on its side.

    “It’s just gone, our beach is gone, the building’s trashed, the trees are gone, it was all so lush in there,” Paskaly said.

    “It’s surreal, it’s a dream and I know we’ll wake up to a nightmare,” Emig said.

    Dan and Tony Tabor were lucky. The couple returned to their Sanibel home prepared for the worst, with water, bleach and drywall cutters in tow to begin the rebuilding process.

    Instead, they found it practically untouched by the storm, with the screens on their porch still in place and plants left outside still upright. If they wanted to, they said, they could spend tonight in the home. “We are so happy,” Tony Tabor said, but “I feel so guilty, because our neighbors have seen so much damage to their houses.”

    Meanwhile, it could be some time before hundreds of residents of Naples, in Collier County, can get back in their homes, City Manager Jay Boodheshwar, told CNN.

    “There was a significant amount of homes, in fact, an entire neighborhood was submerged at least with 3 feet of water. Some areas got 6 to 7 feet of water,” Boodheshwar said. “I would guess it’s probably hundreds of households that are going to be experiencing a period of time when they’re not going to be able to be in their homes.”

    Collier County issued a mandatory curfew Wednesday beginning at midnight – Naples’ begins at 10 p.m. – and ending at 6 a.m. Thursday, according to a Facebook post from Collier County Emergency Management.

    “The purpose of the curfew is to protect the safety of the citizens of Collier County and their property as they begin the process of recovering from the effects of Hurricane Ian,” the post read, adding that the curfew does not apply to emergency responders, employees at health care facilities, any essential workers that provide important services or those seeking medical assistance.

    Those in violation of the curfew will be subject to a second-degree misdemeanor, the agency said.

    Many homes in the once-tranquil community on Sanibel Island “are not livable,” Sanibel Fire Chief William Briscoe has said.

    “There are places off their foundation, and it’s very dangerous out there,” he said previously. “There are alligators running around, and there are snakes all over the place.”

    Most of the electrical poles and transmission lines remain down, along with wastewater systems, Souza said. “Without those necessary infrastructure, it is difficult to sustain a community of 7,000 people year around,” Souza added.

    “It will be some time before we can resume normal life on Sanibel,” he said.

    Ian damaged the Sanibel Causeway that connects Fort Myers to the island community.

    The island’s year-round population is about 7,000 people, growing to 35,000 during the high season that typically would begin in about a month, Souza said.

    But it could take a month or longer just to restore power to some areas of Sanibel and Pine islands, Lee County Electric Cooperative spokesperson Karen Ryan told CNN.

    “It will be much easier to restore power once we can gain access to the island,” she said.

    DeSantis directed transportation authorities to prioritize the repair of the Sanibel Causeway.

    “Access to our barrier islands is a priority for our first responders and emergency services who have been working day and night to bring relief to all Floridians affected by Hurricane Ian,” he said in a statement.

    Pine Island residents should be able to access their community by car later Wednesday, Gov. DeSantis announced, when crews are expected to complete a temporary fix for a part of a damaged bridge washed away in the storm.

    At Salty Sam’s Marina in Fort Myers, owner Darrell Hanson and many of his employees – about 120 at this time of year and up to 200 at the height of tourist season – are working to salvage what they can, some of them dealing with the loss of their livelihoods and personal property.

    “In the parking lot, we must have had about 12 feet of water. Everything on the first floor was … destroyed,” said Hanson, who has so far been unable to access his own home on Sanibel Island. “All our gift stores and restaurants and everything, they’ve lost all their inventory. It’s hundreds of thousands of dollars that each business lost.”

    “But the employees have all come together,” he said, choking back tears. “They’re all out there working their butt off.”

    Employee Ty Landers, who works on a pirate cruise at the marina, rode out the storm at his family’s home in Fort Myers. Fortunately the home and his family are safe, he said.

    But some of his coworkers weren’t so lucky.

    “Many of our employees, even on the pirate ships, my crewmates, they lost their houses, they lost everything,” Landers told CNN. “Hopefully when the time’s right they’ll come back. But right now their lives fell apart, and they’re putting it back together.”

    Salty Sam's Marina, which employs about 120 people this time of year, was heavily damaged by Hurricane Ian.

    In Charlotte County, north of Fort Myers, public schools will be closed until further notice after several of its 22 schools were damaged by Ian.

    “The storm lasted here for over 12 hours, just hammering away. Nothing is safe right now,” Charlotte County public schools spokesperson Mike Riley said.

    Florida hospitals have also been struggling. Emergency departments sustained damage, staffing is impacted as hospital workers were displaced or lost their vehicles, and some facilities lost reliable access to water.

    “We were ready, we had our generators all ready. We had plenty of fuel. What we couldn’t anticipate and didn’t anticipate was the loss of water from our utility companies,” said Dr. Larry Antonucci, president and CEO of Lee Health.

    Members of the Miami-Dade Task Force 1 Search and Rescue team look Tuesday through debris for victims in Matlacha, Florida.

    Many areas remain under boil water notices since the storm made landfall, damaging critical infrastructure, as well as homes.

    Residents of Lee and Charlotte counties – the two counties with the highest death tolls from the hurricane – will be able to get temporary blue coverings with fiber-reinforced sheeting at no cost for their roofs to help reduce further damage, according to a Charlotte County news release.

    Jessica Hernstadt, a resident of Fort Myers Beach in Lee County, said the community “looked like an apocalyptic disaster” when she made her way there after Ian slammed the shore, with cars, pots, pans and clothing littering the area.

    Homes the storm tore from their foundations blocked the streets leading to her house, which she found ablaze when she arrived, she told CNN in an interview Wednesday.

    Later, combing through the ashes, Hernstadt found just one item unscathed: a candlestick holder her great-grandmother carried in her pockets as she emigrated from Poland to the US.

    “It was the simplest, most prized possession that I had, and it gave me a sense of hope, especially today being Yom Kippur,” she said Wednesday, the holiest day of the year in Judaism. “We will survive. Our town will survive, and there’s hope to rebuild.”

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  • Florida’s island dwellers digging out from Ian’s destruction

    Florida’s island dwellers digging out from Ian’s destruction

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    ST. JAMES CITY, Fla. — Following Hurricane Ian’s destruction, many residents on one Florida island have stayed put for days without electricity and other resources while hoping the lone bridge to the mainland is repaired.

    Pine Island, the largest barrier island off Florida’s Gulf Coast, has been largely cut off from the outside world after Ian heavily damaged its causeway and rendered its towns reachable only by boat or aircraft.

    “We feel as a community that if we leave the island — abandon it — nobody is going to take care of that problem of fixing our road in and out,” Pine Island resident Leslie Arias said as small motor boats delivered water and other necessities.

    A week after the Category 4 storm hit southwest Florida, the full breadth of its destruction is still coming into focus. Utility workers continued Wednesday to push ahead to restore power and crews searched for anyone still trapped inside flooded or damaged homes, while the number of storm-related deaths has risen to at least 84 in recent days.

    At least 75 people were killed in Florida, five in North Carolina, three in Cuba and one in Virginia since Ian made landfall on the Caribbean island Sept. 27, a day before it reached Florida’s Gulf Coast. After churning northeastward into the Atlantic, the hurricane made another landfall in South Carolina before pushing into the mid-Atlantic states.

    There have been deaths in vehicle wrecks, drownings and accidents. A man drowned after becoming trapped under a vehicle. Another got trapped trying to climb through a window. And a woman died when a gust of wind knocked her off her porch while she was smoking a cigarette as the storm approached, authorities said.

    In hardest-hit Lee County, Florida, all 45 people killed by the hurricane were over age 50.

    President Joe Biden was scheduled Wednesday to visit Fort Myers’ Fisherman’s Wharf in an area that was especially devastated by winds and surging tides.

    Boats, including huge yachts, were thrown asunder, laying capsized inland far from their usual moorings. Homes and businesses lay in ruins with shattered windows, while the the surrounding landscape is a wasteland of debris and muck.

    The wharf lies on one side of the bridge that leads into Fort Myers Beach, which was brutalized by the storm.

    The Biden administration said the president has made additional federal disaster assistance available to Florida, including for debris removal and emergency protective measures.

    Power restoration has become job one, but vehicle access from barrier islands to the mainland is also a priority. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said a temporary bridge to Pine Island should be finished by the end of the week.

    Officials are also planning a similar temporary bridge for nearby Sanibel Island, but it will take a little more time.

    “They were talking about running ferries and stuff,” DeSantis said. “And honestly, you may be able to do that, but I think this is an easier thing, and I think people need their vehicles anyways.”

    In the meantime, small motorboats continued to provision Pine Island. Jay Pick, who has been on the island since May to help his in-laws, said the winds from Ian blew the house’s roof off.

    “We’re all safe, though,” Pick said Tuesday afternoon. “We’re blessed. Driving around seeing what some people have compared to what we have left, you get that survivor-guilt thing. I’m trying not to. I’m trying to be happy for what we do have left.”

    Arias, who also chose to stay on the island, said Tuesday that many who stayed are supporting each other.

    “We have now gathered a lot of resources, not only donations but volunteers as well,” Arias said. “It’s a wonderful thing to see how the community has come together. In every end of the island … there is a family member or a neighbor helping that other neighbor.”

    ———

    Associated Press writer Bobby Caina Calvan in Fort Myers, Florida, contributed to this report.

    ———

    For more coverage of Hurricane Ian, go to: https://apnews.com/hub/hurricanes

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  • Ian deals blow to Florida’s teetering insurance sector

    Ian deals blow to Florida’s teetering insurance sector

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    Daniel Kelly and his wife bought a 1977 doublewide mobile home in May for about $83,000 at Tropicana Sands, a community for people 55 and older in Fort Myers, Florida. But he ran into roadblocks when he tried to insure it.

    Managers at Tropicana Sands told him he likely wouldn’t be able to find a carrier who would offer a policy because the home was too old. He said he checked with a Florida-based insurance agent who searched and couldn’t find anything.

    “I can insure a 1940s car, why can’t I insure this?” Kelly said.

    Kelly was lucky that his trailer was largely spared by Hurricane Ian aside from some flood damage. But for many Floridians whose homes were destroyed, they now face the arduous task of rebuilding without insurance or paying even steeper prices in an insurance market that was already struggling. Wind and storm-surge losses from the hurricane could reach between $28 billion and $47 billion, making it Florida’s costliest storm since Hurricane Andrew made landfall in 1992, according to the property analytics firm CoreLogic.

    Even before Ian, Florida’s home insurance market was dealing with billions of dollars in losses from a string of natural disasters, rampant litigation and increasing fraud. The difficult environment has put many insurers out of business and caused others to raise their prices or tighten their restrictions, making it harder for Floridians to obtain insurance.

    Those who do manage to insure their homes are seeing costs increase exponentially. Even before Hurricane Ian, the annual cost of an average Florida homeowners insurance policy was expected to reach $4,231 in 2022, nearly three times the U.S. average of $1,544.

    “They are paying more for less coverage,” said Florida’s Insurance Consumer Advocate Tasha Carter. “It puts consumers in dire circumstances.”

    The costs have gotten so high that some homeowners have forgone coverage altogether. About 12% of Florida homeowners don’t have property insurance — or more than double the U.S. average of 5% — according to the Insurance Information Institute, a research organization funded by the insurance industry.

    Florida’s insurance industry has seen two straight years of net underwriting losses exceeding $1 billion each year. A string of property insurers, including six so far this year, have become insolvent, while others are leaving the state.

    As of July, 27 Florida insurers were on a state watchlist for their precarious financial situation; Mark Friedlander, the head of communications for the Insurance Information Institute, expects Hurricane Ian will cause at least some of those to tip into insolvency.

    The insurance industry says overzealous litigation is partly to blame. Loopholes in Florida law, including fee multipliers that allow attorneys to collect higher fees for property insurance cases, have made Florida an excessively litigious state, Friedlander said.

    Florida currently averages about 100,000 lawsuits over homeowners’ insurance claims per year, he said. That compares to just 3,600 in California, which has almost double Florida’s population.

    The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation said the state accounts for 76% of the nation’s homeowners’ insurance claims lawsuits but just 9% of all homeowners insurance claims.

    “Plaintiff attorneys in Florida have historically found ways of circumventing any efforts at reining in legal system abuses, making it likely that ongoing reforms will be needed to further stabilize the insurance marketplace,” said Logan McFaddin of the American Property Casualty Insurance Association.

    But Amy Boggs, the property section chair for the Florida Justice Association — a group that represents attorneys — said the insurance industry is also at fault for refusing to pay out claims. Boggs said homeowners are driven to attorneys “as a last resort.”

    “No policyholder wants to be embroiled in years of litigation just to get their homes rebuilt,” she said. “They come to attorneys when their insurance company underpays their claim and they can’t rebuild.”

    Rampant fraud — particularly among roofing contractors — has also added to costs. Regulators say it’s common for contractors to go door-to-door offering to cover homeowners’ insurance deductible in exchange for submitting a full roof replacement claim to their property insurance company, claiming damage from storms.

    Things have gotten so bad with insurance that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called a special session in May to address the issues. New laws limit the rates attorneys can charge for some property insurance claims and require insurers to insure homes with older roofs — something they had stopped doing because of rising fraud claims.

    The legislation also includes a $150 million fund that will offer grants to homeowners to make improvements to protect against hurricanes. But that program has yet to be launched, and experts say it will take years to reverse the damage to Florida’s insurance market.

    In the meantime, the crisis has pushed more homeowners to Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state-backed insurer that sells home insurance for those who can’t get coverage through private insurers.

    Citizens had more than 1 million active policies as of Sept. 23, before Ian hit, according to Michael Peltier, a spokesman at Citizens. In 2019, that number was roughly 420,000. He said the company had been writing 8,000 to 9,000 new policies per week, double compared with a few years ago. Citizens has $13.4 billion in reserves and predicts it will pay 225,000 claims from Ian worth a total of $3.7 billion.

    Even if they have homeowners’ insurance, many Floridians could still be facing financial ruin because of flooding. Flood damage isn’t typically covered by homeowners’ insurance but can be costly; Florida’s Division of Emergency Management says 1 inch of floodwater can do $25,000 in damage.

    Friedlander said just 18% of Florida homeowners carry flood insurance, either through the federal government’s National Flood Insurance Program or private insurers. In some coastal areas, more than half of homeowners have flood insurance, but in inland areas — where flood waters continued to rise even after the storm had passed — it’s closer to 5%.

    Kelly, whose trailer in Fort Myers was saturated in 4 feet of salt water and sewage after Hurricane Ian, could have benefitted from flood insurance. He thought he might not be able to get it because he didn’t have homeowners insurance, but that’s not the case — flood insurance is completely separate and can even be purchased by renters, experts say.

    “I kinda let it lie when I originally couldn’t find someone to insure it,” he said. “It’s a costly oversight on my part.”

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    Associated Press writer Steve LeBlanc in Boston contributed to this report.

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    For more coverage of Hurricane Ian, go to: https://apnews.com/hub/hurricanes

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