Sanibel: from tourist paradise to ''war zone'' 0:55
(CNN)
- The passage of Hurricane Ian devastated Julie Emig and Vicki Paskaly, especially when they returned to what was once their "dream house" a week after the storm's passage.
Residents of Florida's Sanibel Island — which remains cut off from the mainland — were allowed to return for the first time on Wednesday;
and authorities warned them that they might be surprised by the impact the hurricane had on their community.
Emig and Paskaly, who have lived on Sanibel for the past two years, did not expect to find the place so unrecognizable.
"I can't believe the destruction," Emig told CNN through tears as she and her wife looked at the mountain of debris.
“It is incomprehensible that a storm, a hurricane, can end everything like this in just a few hours.”
Julie Emig and Vicki Paskaly returned to Sanibel Island by boat to check on their home.
The walk from the coast of Sanibel Island to Emig and Paskaly's home was 1.5 kilometers along a windy, sandy road.
Along the way, the pair spotted a familiar bright blue sign lying shattered in the mud on a pile of twisted gutters, blankets and branches.
They also passed a large banyan tree with many of its branches twisted and broken, and a large branch lying in front of a neighbor's garage.
As they approached her house, Paskaly said with a deep sigh, "I'm afraid to turn the corner."
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Julie Emig and Vicki Paskaly spotted this vandalized sign on Sanibel Island as the couple returned to check on their home.
The reopening of Sanibel for residents came on the same day that President Joe Biden visited Florida to see firsthand the destruction left behind by Ian.
The president, who conducted an aerial tour of the damage in Fort Myers, was also briefed by Governor Ron DeSantis and other Florida officials on storm responses and current recovery efforts.
"Today we have one job and one job only," Biden said at a Wednesday afternoon news conference.
"It's making sure the people of Florida get everything they need to fully recover."
Every home on Sanibel Island is damaged in one way or another, and in some cases people have lost everything, Deputy Mayor Richard Johnson told CNN's Pamela Brown on Wednesday.
95% of homes on the island have already been visited by urban search and rescue teams, Johnson said, adding that the city is now looking forward to rebuilding, raising other concerns.
What happened on Sanibel?
The controversy over the evacuation order on the island destroyed by Ian
“We are absolutely concerned about the reconstruction.
This could and will happen again,” Johnson said.
“However, we will be prepared.
We will rebuild, and we will rebuild stronger and better than we were before."
At least 125 people died as a result of the storm, 120 of them in Florida and five in North Carolina.
As of Tuesday night, Florida data provided to CNN reflected at least partial information for 72 of the storm's victims in the state.
Of those 72 deaths, drowning was listed as a possible or known "circumstance" in the deaths of 40 people.
More than 1,000 search and rescue personnel searched some 79,000 structures across Florida, DeSantis told reporters Tuesday, with more than 2,300 recorded rescues.
Search and rescue teams will begin secondary searches of damaged and destroyed homes on Sanibel Island on Thursday, according to City Manager Dana Souza.
Teams will not enter homes unless they have reason to believe someone needs help.
Members of the Miami-Dade Task Force 1 search and rescue team search for victims in a pile of debris Tuesday in Matlacha, Florida.
But it is not yet clear how many people are still missing.
Authorities are compiling a list of people who are still missing, Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said Monday.
Statewide, more than 270,000 customers were still without power as of Wednesday, according to PowerOutage.us, many of them in hard-hit Lee and Charlotte counties.
Many schools also remain closed, some hospitals are still struggling to provide care, and boil water advisories remain in place in some areas.
Hurricane Ian hit the area just before the tourist season.
Johnson said Sanibel will feel an economic hit.
“Unfortunately, this tourist season is going to be non-existent,” Johnson said.
“We are not going to be prepared to receive our tourists at this time.”
"How do you start?"
When Emig and Paskaly finally arrived at their Sanibel home, they were surprised by the damage.
His "dream house" was still standing, but the lower level was "uninhabitable."
As Paskaly walked around the rubble in his front yard, Emig looked over the pool, now covered with trees and bits of metal.
Julie Emig and Vicki Paskaly's pool was covered in metal and wood debris when they first returned a week after Hurricane Ian hit Sanibel Island.
"It'll be a long time before we swim in it, won't it?"
Emig said, adding that they should watch out for alligators.
The chaotic scene left Paskaly in a trance.
She only hoped that some parts had fallen off.
She said, covering her mouth: "How do you start?"
In their garage, the couple found an object on top of a shelf filled with water, which suggested to them that the surf reached at least five feet.
The floor was slippery with mud.
His Mini Cooper, full of mold and water, was ruined.
“I knew I was going to lose my mind, but I just look at all of this and I see five to six feet of water and I can only think: Where do we start?” Emig said through tears.
Inside, they discovered that the refrigerator in their lower level apartment was on top of the counter and their kitchen island was down.
Julie Emig and Vicki Paskaly look at their mailbox amid the destruction.
They weren't the only ones who felt Ian's wrath.
Anddy Garcia, owner of property management company Sanibel Home Concierge, had to tell several clients what they didn't want to hear: Their homes were beyond saving.
"It's totally devastating to hear them on the other end of the phone, just out of breath, and you're telling them their house was destroyed," Garcia said.
"It's totally heartbreaking for me."
Steve and Lori Schulz survived the storm at the home of friends on the island.
They were securing neighbors' houses that weren't on the island, and when they were done, they didn't have time to leave, the couple told CNN.
The Schulz house was under more than a meter of water and "virtually everything" in the house is ruined.
Despite all the destruction, Emig told CNN he was hopeful his community would rebuild.
“Sanibel is filled with a lot of hard working people who care about the island and we will be back,” she said.
Sanibel will be back.
For now, many of the homes in that once-quiet island community have “become uninhabitable,” said Sanibel Fire Chief William Briscoe, also noting that many homes are off their foundations and that there are alligators and snakes in the area. All the island.
In addition to the devastation on the island itself, Ian ripped out several sections of the causeway that was Sanibel's only access to mainland Florida, stranding dozens of people and hampering recovery efforts.
On Wednesday, DeSantis also toured Sanibel for the first time to survey the damage.
"You can fly over the island in a helicopter and you'll see damage, but you don't see what really happened until you're on the ground and you see concrete utility poles cut in half, power lines everywhere, massive amounts of debris," he said.
Officials said most power poles, transmission lines and sewage systems remain down, meaning things are still a while away from normality.
Aerial photo of the Sanibel Causeway, a road that connects Fort Myers with the island community.
It could take a month or more just to restore power to some areas of Sanibel and Pine Islands, Lee County Electric Cooperative spokeswoman Karen Ryan told CNN.
“It will be much easier to restore power once we can access the island,” she said.
An estimated 6,400 people lived in the city of Sanibel as of April 2021, according to the US Census Bureau. The island is also home to a number of hotels and resorts and receives a significant number of tourists each year.
DeSantis directed transportation authorities to prioritize repairing the Sanibel Causeway.
Neighboring Pine Island residents should be able to access their community by car by the end of Wednesday, DeSantis announced, when crews are expected to complete a temporary repair to a portion of a storm-damaged bridge.
Residents lost both their homes and their jobs
At Salty Sam's Marina in Fort Myers, owner Darrell Hanson and many of his employees — about 120 this time of year and as many as 200 at the height of the tourist season — are working to salvage what they can, some of them dealing with the loss of their livelihoods and personal property.
“In the parking lot, we must have had about 12 feet of water.
Everything on the first floor was…destroyed,” said Hanson, who has so far been unable to access his own home on Sanibel Island.
“All of our gift shops and restaurants lost all of their inventory.
There are hundreds of thousands of dollars that each business lost.”
“But all the employees have come together,” he said, fighting back tears.
“Everyone is out there working hard.”
Employee Ty Landers, who works on a pirate cruise ship at the marina, rode out the storm at his family's Fort Myers home.
Fortunately his house and his family are safe, he said.
But some of his co-workers weren't so lucky.
"A lot of our employees, even on the pirate ships, my fellow crew members, lost their homes, lost everything," Landers told CNN.
“Hopefully, when the time is right, they will come back.
But right now their lives fell apart and they're putting them back together."
The Salty Sam Marina, which employs about 120 people at this time of year, was heavily damaged by Hurricane Ian.
Despite ongoing struggles, "there is hope to rebuild"
Many areas remain under advisories since the hurricane made landfall, damaging critical infrastructure as well as homes.
Residents of Lee and Charlotte counties, the two counties with the highest death toll from the hurricane, will be able to be covered with temporary blue coverings with fiber-reinforced sheets at no cost, with the aim of reducing further damage, according to a news from the charlotte county.
In Charlotte County, which is north of Fort Myers, public schools will remain closed until further notice after Ian damaged several of its 22 institutions.
“The storm lasted here for over 12 hours, just hitting.
Nothing is safe right now,” Charlotte County Public Schools spokesman Mike Riley said.
Florida hospitals are also dealing with a difficult reality.
Emergency departments suffered damage, staffing suffered as hospital workers were displaced or lost their vehicles, and some facilities lost access to clean water.
“We were ready, we had our generators ready.
We had a lot of fuel.
What we couldn't and didn't anticipate was the loss of water from the utilities,” said Dr. Larry Antonucci, president and CEO of Lee Health.
Members of the Miami-Dade Task Force 1 search and rescue team search for victims in the rubble Tuesday in Matlacha, Florida.
Jessica Hernstadt, a resident of Fort Myers Beach in Lee County, said it "looked like an apocalyptic mess" when she arrived after Ian hit the shoreline, with cars, pots, pans and clothes strewn about the area.
Homes ripped off their foundations by the storm blocked streets leading to her home, which she found on fire, she told CNN in an interview Wednesday.
Later, going through the ashes, Hernstadt found only one intact item: a candlestick that his great-grandmother carried in her pockets when she emigrated from Poland to the United States.
"It was the simplest and most precious possession I had, and it gave me a sense of hope, especially today that is Yom Kippur," he said Wednesday.
Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the year in Judaism.
"We will survive. Our people will survive and there is hope to rebuild," he said.
CNN's Randi Kaye, Laura Dolan and Jerry Simonson reported from Sanibel Island, Florida, while Amir Vera wrote from Atlanta, Georgia.
CNN's Dakin Andone, Nouran Salahieh, Wesley Bruer, Amy Simonson, Amanda Musa, Leyla Santiago, Melissa Alonso, Naomi Thomas, Laura Dolan and David Williams contributed to this report.
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