Mid-September 2022 is when I learned that Hurricane Ian would potentially hit my area in Lee County. A month after I was finally able to take a breath and reflect on the experience and events. It was a major event in our life and the lives around us. Even for me without a lot of damage; the change in perspective and paradigm is marked.

I was in Edwardsville, IL when I learned about the approaching storm. At that point, it was unknown to where it would touch down in the states but most projected paths had it going to the Pensacola area, well north of Lee County where I am based. Still, the news coming to me just prior to setting up my booth for the art show, put me on high alert. I have been visiting Bonita Springs, Florida since I was 4 years of age when my grandfather moved here and I have lived in Florida since 1991, so I have seen a few storms in my life. I know that when a storm is coming at us from the gulf side, it must be taken very seriously. Hurricane Charley taught big lessons. That storm was supposed to hit well north of where it actually did and caught so many people unprepared when it took an unexpected right turn into the Punta Gorda/Port Charlotte area rather than well north of Tampa as all of the models showed. Ian made Charley look like a Sunday picnic.

Being a Florida homeowner, you have to be prepared for such events but I will have to admit that I was less prepared than I should have been. Life has handed me massive change in the last four years and I hadn’t taken the time to really get settled into the place I now call home. We had plenty of water and a generator that (so I thought) would power the whole house but my window shutter situation was, let’s say sub par. I was nervous.

As the weekend wore on, I watched the forecast for every update. As the prediction models started to inch further south, I decided to start driving towards home immediately after tearing down the booth Sunday evening instead of leisurely starting the drive towards VA where my next show was scheduled. I made it as far as Nashville that night, then a 14 hour drive on Monday got me home about 11:30 pm.

Tuesday made me so grateful that I have two wonderful strong sons. Together, we made the preparations that we could, mostly by securing all outside debris that could be potentially turned into wind blown missiles. Our yard is big, about an acre and a quarter, and parts of it had a sort of “Sanford and Son” esthetic, so this was not as easily achieved as you may imagine. We did it though, and settled in with our iPads fully loaded with downloaded entertainment.

When the storm finally arrived, our power stayed on for a while and we thought it would maybe not be so bad. Then poof, bye bye lights and air conditioning, water, etc. My whole house propane generator worked for 20 minutes and then said, ”Nope!” Sigh. So began the eight days without power.

Exhausted dinner by phone light after power loss.

“The death toll from Ian reached 100, making it the third most deadly hurricane to hit the mainland in a decade. The number of confirmed deaths across three states continues to climb nine days after Ian roared ashore in Florida with 150-mile (240-kilometer) winds, leveling homes, unleashing floods and knocking out power to 2.6 million homes and businesses. It killed 94 people in Florida, five in North Carolina and one in Virginia.” — TIME

No power to heat up soup, and no energy to grill any of the rapidly defrosting food in the freezer at the moment of this photo. I was just hungry and tired. - Christine Adele Moore

Still our spirits were good, but it was so hard to not know what was going on in the community around us. There was no cell service so I couldn’t rely on others who lived away from the path to fill me in. I started to grow very concerned about our friends and neighbors who live nearer to the coast than us or along our rivers. The “worst case scenario” predicted storm surge the meteorologists kept hammering us with in the hours before the storm kept me up with my heart pounding as it seemed the winds would never stop. The storm was moving so slow, only at about 8 miles per hour as it turned out, and was arriving just prior to high tide at. I was braced for the bad news of serious damage but nothing could have prepared me for what I was to learn about the actual devastation.

“More than 1,600 people have been rescued from Hurricane Ian’s path in parts of southwest and central Florida since last week, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office said Sunday. Now, as blue skies return, Floridians who took shelter while the hurricane raged have emerged – many of them still without power or clean drinking water – to find their communities unrecognizable. More than 491,000 homes, businesses and other customers in Florida still did not have power as of Monday night, according to PowerOutage.us. In Fort Myers Beach, where search crews are going through the rubble one house at a time, power may not be restored for 30 days due its electrical infrastructure being destroyed, Lee County Manager Roger Desjarlais said.” - CNN

By now, most are fully aware of the utter annihilation of Fort Myers Beach and the vast destruction on Sanibel, as well as many other areas, so I won’t articulate it all here. If you are new to this story, just look up Hurricane Ian devastation and you’ll see what I am writing about. We ended up incredibly lucky, with just a downed tree, lots of debris, minor roof damage, and our pool screens were kaput. But no flooding and still with our senses of humor (at least until they tried to turn our power back on on the fifth day and it set a tree on fire behind my garage, but that’s another story).

As cell service started to come back intermittently, and I started to learn about the real situation, my heart started to break. Friends have lost everything and many lost lives. Our area will be forever marked and changed by this storm. We will rebuild, of course, but the landscape will be different. Everything will be built strong and up to current codes so that this devastation won’t happen again to such a vast degree. That’s good, of course, and I know that change is inevitable. I know. Still, I will mourn the old, beachy feel of this community that I will always associate with my grandfather, who built the house, with his own hands, that I now call home and that kept us safe during Ian.

Never has food tasted so good as when our local diner opened up with hot food and beautiful warm smiles.

Hurricane Ian FACTS:

Hurricane Ian is the second-deadliest storm to strike the continental U.S. this century, behind Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
At least 101 people have been confirmed dead, including 92 in Florida, five in North Carolina, one in Virginia, and three in Cuba.
Hurricane Ian made its initial landfall as a Category 3 storm on September 27, 2022, in Cuba, leaving the entire island without power.
Ian strengthened to a Category 4 storm as it made landfall west of Fort Myers, Florida, on September 28, 2022.
Only four Category 5 storms have made landfall in the U.S. with maximum sustained winds greater than 155 mph.
Hurricane Ian followed Hurricane Fiona, a Category 1 storm that made landfall in Puerto Rico on Sunday, September 18, 2022.

WEATHERING HURRICANE IAN AND BREATHING AFTER THE STORM

Hurricane Ian FACTS: