Kathy Sharp believed she would be safe at Thunderbird Park, a palm-lined retirement community two miles from the Gulf of Mexico. For days, forecasters indicated that Hurricane Ian was headed toward Tampa.
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But as the storm moved in and devastated Fort Myers, Sharp looked out the window and noticed parts of her neighbor’s roof flying through the air. Not long after, her house began to fall apart, and the strong wind blew aluminum siding into the swirl of airborne debris. Then the water hit.
“It was just like a river out of nowhere,” said Sharp, 74, describing the apocalyptic storm surge. “There was nothing there, and then suddenly it was like a wave of water in the house.”
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Frightened, Sharpe and her husband, Lonnie Henry, called 911. However, the couple knew no one would come to their rescue.
Shocking stories of survival emerged across southwest Florida after rescuers rescued hundreds of people from homes that had become islands surrounded by water.
An elderly woman told how the water rose so high that she only had six inches of room to breathe. A couple described seeing from their window several large fish swimming in the street.
Many said they were caught off guard even though they had secured supplies of non-perishable food, water and generators, only to discover their homes were unfit for the storm.
In communities near the coast of Fort Myers, the water surged, collapsing buildings, collapsing concrete walls and pushing sailboats and trash cans hundreds of feet.
Floods in Florida after Hurricane Ian (Photo: Reuters screenshot)At one of the gas stations in the area, a large boat was parked next to a gas pump, as if ready to fill up. Dozens were still waiting to be rescued from trailer parks and luxury apartment complexes on the waterfront in a part of the country where a population of senior citizens lives.
Bailey Everett, 56, said he was sleeping on a couch and woke up when he felt water starting to enter his ground floor home. He then quickly got out to try to save his car which was parked nearby.
Hurricane Ian hit Florida (Photo: REUTERS/Steve Nesius)“The water reached the car,” he said. “But she started, and I drove her to church.” He returned home when the water receded to find all his possessions waterlogged and destroyed.
A few meters away, Ann Dalton, 70, felt lucky because the flood stopped inches short of the house her family has owned since the 1980s. But as she watched the murky water, Dalton said she still had the scariest night of her life.
“The strange thing is that it was like a river of currents, and it was not calm water at all,” she said. “It was very scary, because we couldn’t go anywhere. We would fall.”