On Wednesday, Sept. 28, Hurricane Ian hit southwest Florida. I am from Naples, Florida, though I was fortunate enough to be on Brandeis campus when the storm made landfall. Hurricane Ian was forecast to curve northwards and make landfall around Tampa Bay, but instead, the storm moved south towards Fort Myers, Naples and the surrounding areas. I spoke with my parents to get an account of what happened during the unprecedented storm, one of the strongest on record for Florida.
Tuesday, Sept. 27
The storm was so large that, on Tuesday, when it was still 300 miles out from shore, there was already wind and rain that got progressively more and more intense. By the evening, my family started receiving tornado alerts on their phones.
Wednesday, Sept. 28
Wednesday morning: Over the preceding hours, there were continuous strong winds, loud like a train roaring past, which made the hurricane shutters vibrate against the windows. The wind was accompanied by bursts of rain. Despite all of this, various birds—doves, ibises—were still seen flying in the sky.
Around 10:30-11 a.m.: The lights were flickering and then the power went off. This was the indication that Hurricane Ian had come on shore. Within a few hours, the swimming pool had turned a dark, swampy green, full of rain and leaves and debris. At this point, there was no phone service or access to the news. A few text messages were received sporadically, though it was difficult to send text messages.
Around 3:45 p.m.: The house’s courtyard began to fill with floodwater, reaching the thresholds of doors. One of the windows facing the courtyard had not been boarded up with shutters, which offered the view of the water level slowly increasing. My father and mother placed towels down at the base of the doors to prevent the water from seeping in.
At this point, my sister went to her bedroom to pick up things that she had on the floor and found herself ankle-deep in water in her bedroom (around five inches), with water in her closet. My father did not know where the water was coming from—he thought it may have been coming from the bathroom—and went to the garage to get a toolbox to shut off the water in the bathroom. As he opened the door between the laundry room and garage, water came rushing in: Floodwaters, now three feet high, had been forced into the garage under high pressure, lifting the trashcans and pushing them around inside. My dad slammed the laundry room door shut, locking it, and started placing towels on the floor in the laundry room as a barrier. My father, mother and sister carried everything possible—the bed, clothes, books—out of my sister’s bedroom.
4 p.m.: High tide for the day. This meant that the worst of the storm surge would arrive. A storm surge occurs when the winds from the hurricane force seawater inland. In this case, some of the storm surge water came from Tampa Bay, which was drained in some parts all the way down to the sea floor.
The reason my sister’s bedroom had already gained water before my father opened the laundry room door is because her closet wall backs up onto the garage wall. Water had seeped in through the shared wall and was coming into her bedroom through the closet. The water smelled like sewage—“horrible water”—and had picked up random debris along the way.
Around 4:10 p.m.: There was around two feet of water in the courtyard when the water suddenly began to recede. If the water had continued to increase, my family would have had to try to move to a high location. The saying to keep in mind during a hurricane is to “hide from the wind, run from the water.” What is important to know is that as all of this was taking place, no one in my family knew what was happening outside the walls of their courtyard home. Without an internet connection, they did not know that their neighborhood was four feet deep in water or that the road that runs along the front of their neighborhood had become a deep and strong-flowing river. I knew more about what was going on than my family did; they did not realize the extent of the damage in Florida until much later.
After 5 p.m.: The storm was so strong that the wind and rain continued past 6 p.m. despite predictions that the storm would let up sooner, and it continued on through the night.
Thursday, Sept. 29
Thursday morning: My dad went outside—“it was possible to see how high the water had been from the debris sticking to the sides of walls and trees.” Coast guard airplanes and police helicopters were flying overhead helping and assessing the damage. Our house is at around 11 feet of elevation from sea level, and it ultimately received around two feet of storm surge, so there must have been around 12 to 13 feet of total storm surge in our neighborhood. (Note: I saw a video online of the garage for the condo building across the road from our neighborhood flooded by eight to nine feet of water, and a restaurant a five-minute drive away submerged up to its roof. One of our neighbors sent a video of what the neighborhood looked like as the water started to recede, and the road looked like a river.)
My family walked outside and found the oddest assortment of items strewn about, including a piano bench, car seat booster, bicycle rack and a dead eel.
Thursday afternoon: My family drove to Miami. By this point, the house still had no power and—very crucially in Florida—no air conditioning. The area was also under a “boil water” notice, which meant that the water was unsafe to drink. Some of the major tree debris had been cleared during the morning, allowing cars to leave the neighborhood. On the I-75 highway, road tolls had been suspended. As my family drove to Miami, they saw more than 50 ambulances driving towards the Fort Myers area to pick up patients. Many excavator and electric repair trucks were also coming in—Florida Power and Light had staged hundreds of their emergency
