It's been eight months since Hurricane Ian, the costliest natural disaster in South Florida history, hit the shores of Fort Myers Beach and altered its landscape, leaving behind a trail of pain, tears and heartbreak.
The storm left houses flooded, sunken, and destroyed. Yet, the residents of the city have picked themselves up, tied their laces tight and gone to work.
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“So, what it looks like now, it looks like it's still kind of a hot mess, but it's a million miles ahead of where it was six, eight months ago,” said Dan Allers, the Mayor of Fort Myers.
According to the Mayor, there has been a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy holding up the reconstruction, which, unfortunately he says, is part of the process when dealing with such a large catastrophe.
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“People are still dealing with their insurance companies.... There's a lot of paperwork and a lot of process you must go through to be able to get the money that you need to be able to rebuild. I can tell you that most of homeowners and business owners, they want the building gone.”
While the process has been slow, hope still lies in the hearts and minds of the residents as people begin to flock back.
“In a normal year we do about 2000 permits a year. We're already over 10,000 since the storm,” affirms Mayor Allers.
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But with the population growing again, people are afraid the city will lose its charm, and begin building massive complexes which will price out the long-time habitants.
Despite the worries, Mayor Allers allays the fears, insisting that the new buildings will be built stronger and better in accordance with the county codes to further prevent any future calamities.
“We could see how the buildings can be stronger. We lost a lot of the cottages, but now we'll have homes that are going to be built a little bit, businesses that are going to be bigger and stronger. And hopefully, if this ever happens again, we're more resilient for it as we're approaching hurricane season.”
Speaking of the new Hurricane Season, which starts this June 1st, Mayor Allers wishes to send a reminder to those who don’t listen to the warnings.
“And then if you don't heed the warnings, bad, bad things can happen to you or your home. So so be prepared as best you can.”
