October 4, 2022 Hurricane Ian’s aftermath in Florida

Mike Verdream

Mike Verdream decided to ride out Hurricane Ian in Matlacha — a tiny island between Pine Island and the southwest Florida mainland — and planned to go to his boss’ two-story home if things got too bad, his niece told CNN.

Stacy Verdream said she spoke with her uncle briefly on Wednesday, the day the Category 4 storm crashed ashore. Her cousin spoke with him later that day and he said the water was 4 feet deep before telling her he had to go.

“It was a very brief call because he said he was very scared and she’d never heard him like that because he wasn’t that type of person. He’s always put on a brave face,” Verdream said. “But she said, he sounded absolutely terrified.”

On Monday, the sheriff’s office informed her brother that Verdream had died — and on Tuesday a detective told Verdream that her uncle’s remains were found Friday in a canal.

Authorities used medical records to identify him, Verdream said, and an autopsy is scheduled for Wednesday. 

Verdream said her uncle was a very giving person.

Her uncle had moved in with her family after her father died when she was young, she said.

“He was always there for me growing up, teaching me how to drive and taking me to the fair,” she said. “The cool uncle that would buy me like a dirt bike and bought the jet ski for us to, like, go out on the lake.”

He also was an amazing cook and could whip up a delicacy of a meal even when it seemed like the kitchen was empty.

“He’s just funny and goofy and very smart,” she added.

A half submerged boat is seen on Sanibel Island, Florida, on October 1.

Residents who plan to return to view their homes on Sanibel Island on Wednesday will be in for quite a shock after Hurricane Ian leveled much of the southwest Florida barrier island.

Dana Souza, the city manager, said it’s going to be an emotional day for many residents, who will be permitted to visit the barrier island tomorrow. Sanibel’s infrastructure is devastated, he said, adding that most of the poles and transmission lines are still down.

He noted that while the year-round population is about 7,000 people, it grows to 35,000 during the high season which is about a month away. But because many businesses will not be able to open, he anticipates the island will also be impacted economically.

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

The airport in hard-hit Fort Myers — Southwest Florida International Airport — will reopen on Wednesday for limited commercial flight operations, the Lee County Port Authority said in a statement.

Travelers are being asked to use caution and to give themselves extra time to get to the airport due to the effects of Hurricane Ian, which clobbered the region as a Category 4 storm last week.  

RSW will be open from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. with flights operating between 8:30 a.m. and 6 p.m., it said.

Charlotte County public schools will be closed until further notice, according to Public Information Officer Mike Riley.

Riley said that several of the 22 schools were damaged by Hurricane Ian, which battered the southwest Florida county last week. As of late Tuesday, more than half of utility customers in the county were still without power, according to Poweroutage.us.

The district is having all the buildings inspected to make sure everything is safe before students and staff return, he said.

There are about 16,000 students and 2,200 employees in the district, he said. 

Around 400,000 customers in Florida remain without power as of Tuesday evening, according to PowerOutage.us.

After Hurricane Ian made landfall last week in southwest Florida as a Category 4 storm, about 2.5 million outages were reported.

The worst-hit areas are Lee County, with 208,263 outages, and Charlotte County, with 75,721 customers without power.

Outages also continue to be tracked in Sarasota, Manatee, Collier, Hendry, Hardee and DeSoto counties.

Track outages here:

Command and control coordination centers will be set up at barrier islands in southwest Florida, Department of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said Tuesday.

The centers will be set up on Fort Myers Beach, Pine Island, Captiva Island, North Captiva Island, Cayo Costa, Boca Chita, Cabbage Key and Useppa Island.

Meanwhile, more than 200,000 people have applied for FEMA assistance and more people are expected to be registered at a Disaster Recovery Center in Fort Myers, Guthrie said.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a news conference at the Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee, Florida on September 25.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he will likely visit Sanibel Island on Wednesday, a week after the island was ravaged by Hurricane Ian.

DeSantis said he visited nearby Pine Island — where a major bridge has cut off access to the barrier island — on Tuesday.

“We’re gonna have that bridge patched this week,” DeSantis said during a news conference in Fort Myers. “Yesterday we had 130 FDOT trucks that were there working to get this temporary bridge fixed. It will be done this week.”

DeSantis said he has requested a bid for a contractor to assess damage to the main bridge leading to Sanibel Island.

City of Sanibel Mayor Holly Smith told CNN on Tuesday that residents will be allowed back on Wednesday to assess the damage to their property, but the island is still “extremely unsafe.”

A state trooper and national guardsman work together near flooding from the Peace River on October 4 in Arcadia, Florida. 

The National Guard has rescued more than 2,100 people and 50 pets as part of its Hurricane Ian recovery operations, according to the Defense Department.

Ryder said that the Guard had “more than 5,198 soldiers and airmen on state active duty from Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, New York, Washington, Georgia and Montana.”

“National Guard support to hurricane recovery efforts in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina have concluded, but 65 Virginian Army Guard soldiers and three helicopters remain activated in state active duty status for potential high water missions in southeast Virginia,” Ryder said.

Boats are washed in “about 50 to 100 yards in the mangroves” on Sanibel Island, and it’s a challenge to reach them to make sure there are no people in the vessels, according to an emergency rescue worker.

“It’s very difficult to enter and search the boats,” Florida Urban Search and Rescue Task Force 4 rescue specialist Percy Del Aguila told CNN’s Leyla Santiago.

“It’s difficult to be looking at people’s things that are littered all over, where they shouldn’t be,” said Del Aguila. “It’s weird, finding boats where they shouldn’t be, and looking at people’s property when they have lost everything.”

Many of the vessels are in areas that are inaccessible, according to Matt Jaynes, rescue team manager with Task Force 4.

“We’re taking smaller boats that we can to get back into these backwater areas and then climbing through the mangroves with aerial recon to get to these targeted vessels that are back there” to search and make sure they are clear, Jaynes said.

According to Jaynes, “there’s a large population of commercial shrimp vessels and mooring fields, where people live on sailboats and cabin cruisers year-round,” and many people decided to ride out the storm on their vessels. 

“We have a large amount of boats deep in the woods that would normally have people on, so we’re having to go along and find … which ones have been locked and secured,” Jaynes told Santiago.

Jaynes said the team has found some surprises.

In a Facebook post Tuesday, Task Force 4 said it continues to conduct search and rescue operations in Fort Myers as well.

“After conducting operations in Matlacha and Punta Gorda, we are focusing our efforts on vessels stranded in and around Matanzas Harbor and Matanzas Pass” in a joint effort with Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the task force added. 

A house burns on September 29 in Sanibel, Florida.

Residents will be allowed back on Sanibel Island on Wednesday to assess the damage to their property, but the island is still “extremely unsafe,” according to Mayor Holly Smith.

Houses that might look fine from the outside may still prove to be too damaged to live in, she said.

Asked if she knows the state of her own home, Smith said she’s only viewed it during a fly-over.

“My house has been breached. Do I know if it’s habitable or not? I do not,” she said.

The mayor added that it is her belief that despite the dangers on the island, it’s important to get residents back.

“And then we hope they safely get off the island,” she said, adding that at this stage “it is critically important that no one lives on that island.” 

Smith said that the plan is to allow people back onto the island from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that President Biden will be briefed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis when he visits Fort Myers Wednesday to survey damage inflicted by Hurricane Ian. 

Jean-Pierre said the Republican governor will be joined by FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell and other state and local officials who will “provide the President with an operational briefing on the current response and recovery efforts.”

Jean-Pierre previewed the trip saying that Biden will travel to Fort Myers to “reaffirm his commitment to supporting the people of Florida as they recover and rebuild from the devastating storm.”

While there, the President will meet with small business owners and local residents impacted by Hurricane Ian and thank the federal, state and local officials who are working around the clock to provide life-saving assistance, restore power, distribute food and water, remove debris and begin rebuilding efforts.

This is not the first time the two have come together after tragedy struck in Florida. Biden and DeSantis also met after the Surfside condo accident in July 2021.

Officials from DeSoto County Schools in Florida anticipate the high school will remain closed for two months, following a devastating blow from Hurricane Ian.

In a Facebook video message on Monday, Bobby Bennett, superintendent of schools for DeSoto County said “our high school is going to be closed approximately two months and we’re coming up with an emergency plan to make sure that we continue the education for our high school students.”

Bennett said the high school suffered extensive roof and water damage.

Other schools may be ready sooner, Bennett said, noting they had less damage than the high school. 

All DeSoto County schools are closed until further notice, due to damage sustained during the storm, the district said in a statement. DeSoto is one of five school districts across the state that have not re-opened since Hurricane Ian, the Florida Department of Education announced Tuesday.

“We will communicate a timeline for reopening schools as soon as we can safely welcome students and staff back into our building,” the district said.

DeSoto County is located north of Lee County in Southwest Florida.

Jayron Purvis, 22, died Friday as the remnants of Hurricane Ian passed through Robersonville, North Carolina.

Robersonville is Martin County and about 18 miles north of Greenville, North Carolina.

Purvis is one of four storm-related deaths in the state. 

According to a release from Gov. Roy Cooper’s office, three people died in separate vehicle-related incidents on Friday and one person died from carbon monoxide poisoning after running a generator in a closed garage.

Flooded homes are seen in Port Charlotte, Florida, on September 29.

Residents of Lee and Charlotte counties in Florida can receive temporary no-cost roof repairs if their roof was damaged by Hurricane Ian, according to a Charlotte County news release Tuesday.  

“A temporary blue covering with fiber-reinforced sheeting will be installed to help reduce further damage to property until permanent repairs can be made,” the county said. 

“This program is for primary residences or a permanently occupied rental property with less than 50 percent structural damage,” it added. 

Those with vacation rental homes, flat roofs, or roofs made of metal, clay, slate, or asbestos tile do not qualify for the program, according to the release.  

The roof repair program, known as Operation Blue Roof, is run through the US Army Corps of Engineers. Residents must sign up by Oct. 23 to qualify.  

The two counties have the highest death tolls of any other county, according to a CNN tally. Lee County has reported at least 55 deaths while Charlotte County has reported at least 24. And nearly 300,000 customers are still without power, according to PowerOutage.US.  

Approximately 3,000 nursing home residents from 25 nursing centers in Florida remain evacuated after Hurricane Ian tore through the state last week, according to the Florida Health Care Association. 

No deaths related to the hurricane have been reported to the association, spokesperson Kristen Knapp told CNN by email. 

About 8,000 nursing home residents were were previously evacuated as of last Friday. 

Right before losing phone connection, Fort Myers, Florida, resident Stan Pentz told his daughter he was going to drown.

Then the phone cut out, and he wasn’t able to make contact with his family for 20 hours.

Pentz told CNN’s Kate Bolduan that he knew he had to jump out of his condo and start swimming once the water rose to about two feet to the top of his roof.

“And then the wind shifted back, so it started, the surge was the other way so it was starting to get lower. So I don’t know how many hours it was, but I was able to get down and get across, get to the building, get up to the second floor, found myself a spot … where the wind wasn’t and the rain, and I got into a corner and I stayed there all night,” Pentz continued.

Pentz said thinking about his kids and grandchildren kept him going.

His daughter, Stephanie Downing, told CNN she thought about every possible scenario during the time that she couldn’t make contact with her father.

Once they were reunited, she jokingly said, “I laid my head on his chest and I said, ‘Hey Michael Phelps, you had a nice swim.’”

Pentz said he has lost everything to Hurricane Ian.  

“I lost everything that was in there. Everything that I’ve had for my life, all my life. … Pictures are gone,” he said.

Lee County, Florida, Sheriff Carmine Marceno said Tuesday that officials have identified 46 of the 55 people who died in the county as a result of Hurricane Ian. 

“We’ve had 55 total deaths in Lee County,” he said. “Out of those 55, nine bodies are still unidentified.”  

County officials are trying to “properly identify the deceased [and are] working with the family members,” said Marceno during a storm briefing.  

“I’m proud to say that we had over 3,800 calls for service that were holding” or pending since the storm hit. “Welfare checks, calls to 911, all the stuff that we could not get to during these catastrophic events, and today, we are back to the normal flow of traffic,” said the sheriff.  

Lee County is “not holding calls” thanks to the help from other “law enforcement that have come from everywhere to help us lead Lee County Sheriff’s Office,” said Marceno. 

“I want to thank the residents of Lee County and the great residents,” said the sheriff. “We are coming back on our feet.” 

“We took such a catastrophic hit, but everybody wants to help, [its] very heartwarming during these tragic events because in minutes and hours, a lot of people had their lives washed away,” he said.

Elizabeth McGuire, 49, was found dead in her Cape Coral, Florida, home Friday after Hurricane Ian tore through the area, her son told CNN.

Police told her son that his mother had died in her bed holding her cellphone and it looked like she died instantly, Andrew Chedester said.

Her family had last spoken to McGuire on Wednesday and was having trouble reaching her since then, Chedester said.

A Cape Coral Police Department detective knocked on his door Friday and told him of his mother’s death, Chedester said. He had already received a call from his mother’s ex-boyfriend just before that, he said.

CNN also spoke to her mother Susan McGuire, who learned of her daughter’s death through Chedester. She said her daughter had been suffering from blood clots from deep-vein thrombosis and was on disability.

Susan McGuire was stranded on Pine Island and had limited cell service during and after the storm. She was evacuated to the mainland on Sunday by the US Coast Guard and she has an appointment Tuesday at the funeral home to make arrangements with her grandson.

“One hundred blizzards will not cost you what one hurricane will cost you,” said Susan McGuire, who had moved to the area from Maryland a few years ago. “My husband’s business whipped out, my daughter is dead. The destruction is massive. I never had a blizzard take anything away from me.”

Nishelle Harris-Miles from Dayton, Ohio, has been identified as one of the victims of Hurricane Ian, her mother Michele Harris told CNN. 

Harris-Miles traveled to Fort Myers with a group of friends and family to celebrate her 40th birthday and a friend’s birthday, her mother said. She was staying at a vacation rental when Hurricane Ian hit Florida, according to her mother. 

Harris-Miles’ mother told CNN that the group of friends quickly realized it was not safe to be in Fort Myers, but were unable to find anyone willing to pick them up from where they were staying. 

Harris said water entered the vacation rental and pushed them towards the ceiling. “They were on top a mattress and 2 of the girls couldn’t swim so they tied themselves together with a sheet to try to keep each other safe. They started kicking and hollering, begging for help. The ceiling then collapsed on them.” 

According to Harris-Miles’ mother, Nishelle noticed a nail had punctured her body while they were trapped in the home. 

A neighbor finally heard the screams coming from inside the property and rescued the group, taking them to a makeshift shelter. 

Harris leaves behind two daughters and two sons, her mother told CNN. 

“She was always the life of the party. She was a caregiver and a loving person. She enjoyed life. My daughter was loved by many people.”

Harris-Miles’ mother said her daughter enjoyed dancing and spending time with her family.

Airbnb is committing $5 million to offer “free, temporary housing” for Hurricane Ian and Fiona victims, the company said in a news release Sunday. 

The company has also donated $250,000 to Florida’s Disaster Relief Fund, the news release added.  

The money will be used for those who may have lost or had their homes severely damaged and to house first responders on the scene, assisting throughout the recovery process.  

The company is working with local nonprofits like Global Empowerment Mission, CORE Response, Operation Blessing and Inspiritus, to find places for people to stay, according to the release.  

Residents looking for immediate accommodations can go online to airbnb.com/d/hurricaneianflorida.