By Melissa Chan
The eight people trapped in the Hideaway Village motel realized they might die as geysers shot through the bulging floors and the bolts holding the doors shut snapped like toothpicks under the pressure of Hurricane Ian.
The turquoise motel, ripped from its foundations amid 150-mile-per-hour (240-kilometer-per-hour) winds, drifted west for more than a third of a mile.
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In one room, Michelle Radabaugh, general manager of the Fort Myers Beach motel, kept her two adult daughters on speakerphone, too scared to say goodbye, even as she watched a large building rise from the ground and head toward her from the other. side of the street.
"I didn't see any chance of survival," Radabaugh recalled through tears.
In an adjacent room, Chanel Maston and three of her family and friends wrapped themselves in a sheet and lay on a mattress, as the storm waves carried them up.
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They screamed as the tidal wave began to push them against the roof, killing one of them, Maston's cousin, a mother of four.
After the motel crashed and the roof above the women gave way, an employee from the motel next door pulled them out of the water.
The worker hoisted the three female survivors, his wife and 10-year-old son to the rafters through a broken ceiling panel that he had flagged down for repair weeks ago but had never been fixed.
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They waited there for 14 hours.
The Hideaway Village motel wreck, pieced together through interviews with survivors, reveals how the storm's casualty count could easily have been much higher than 135 people, according to a count from our sister network, NBC News.
With thousands of people displaced and out of work, accounts of survival and loss highlight the destruction the hurricane wrought on Fort Myers Beach and the great cost to those who survived.
Hurricane Ian ripped the roof off the Hideaway Village motel. Courtesy of Michelle Radabaugh
"We got stuck"
Chanel Maston and her loved ones nearly skipped Fort Myers Beach after missing their initial flight from Dayton, Ohio.
But on Sept. 27, the women arrived at the Hideaway Village motel, full of energy, under the impression that the storm's threats were overblown, Maston recalled.
Maston said they were going to make the most of celebrating the 40th birthday of his cousin, Nishelle Harris-Miles.
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The group ate at a nearby tiki bar, then returned to their second-floor room for a swimsuit photo shoot.
"We goofed around, we had fun," Maston, 48, said.
Chanel Maston, front, and Nishelle Harris-Miles. Courtesy of Chanel Maston
That same night, a motel employee arrived with his wife and 10-year-old son.
Fearing the prognosis was worse than he thought, he made a last-minute decision to move his family from their nearby single-story house, believing they would be safer at the motel, which was on higher ground.
Radabaugh, who lived in the motel, said he didn't want to be there.
He had his Jeep lined up, with plans to evacuate with his two dogs and his cat, but he couldn't abandon the new motel guests.
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"I just couldn't go," the CEO said.
In their three separate rooms, side by side on the second floor, the eight people huddled together at the Hideaway Village motel on Sept. 28, when the Category 4 hurricane made landfall near Cayo Costa.
"We were trapped," Radabaugh recalled.
Michelle Radabaugh and her dog Bubbles. Courtesy of Michelle Radabaugh
The storm came first for her.
As the walls of Radabaugh's corner room came crashing down, the 49-year-old woman and her pets jumped onto the bed.
She put her phone in a sealed plastic bag and turned on location services so she could be tracked.
She called her daughters and didn't hang up.
“I was afraid to hang up the phone.
I feel deeply guilty about it because I don't know what they heard,” she noted.
They heard the moment when the building across the street crashed directly into the motel, making a huge gash against the side of the motel, causing chunks of wall to collapse on top of Radabaugh and his pets.
And then the call was cut off.
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"It dragged us into the ocean," Radabaugh recalled.
A wave tore one of the dogs from his arms.
He watched as his small face sank into the water.
Another 17 hours passed before her daughters heard from her again.
The Hideaway Village motel in Fort Myers Beach, Florida, was destroyed by Hurricane Ian.Google Maps
Spend the night on top of the wooden ceiling beams
The four women who were on vacation quickly panicked when storm waters began to rise through their window.
Maston called 911, but no one was able to come.
"Hell broke loose," he said.
As the waters rushed in, they resigned themselves to a mattress and floated up.
Next door, the motel clerk and his family did the same.
But in a life-changing moment, the family's cat, Daniel, broke out of his cage and jumped through a broken board right on top of his sofa bed.
The employee, who wished to remain anonymous to maintain his privacy, had written on a yellow sticky note weeks earlier that the hole in the ceiling in room 33 needed to be fixed.
He pasted the note on the reception desk, where she was forgotten until now.
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He quickly helped his wife and son through the broken panel, and just as he entered the rafters himself, he saw Radabaugh float away.
He then heard the women next door screaming for help.
"They didn't have the hole, so they were being pinned against the ceiling," he said.
When the roof collapsed, that's when he realized a nail had pierced Nishelle Harris-Miles's neck.
He urged the women to climb into the rafters without her.
“She was not responding.
She wasn't moving,” she said.
“I just said, 'She's gone.
We have to move on."
Nishelle Harris-Miles. Courtesy of Chanel Maston
Up in the rafters, the group settled in for a long night.
The employee said that he tried to pass the time by talking.
But Maston said most of the time there was silence as the women were consumed by thoughts of Harris-Miles.
"We were worried about her, crying," Maston said.
From time to time, the saturated wood groaned and cracked, causing the six people inside to move to a new spot.
“You never knew which part was going to break,” the employee said.
Throughout the night, they could hear the screams of other people trapped around them.
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Among them was Sheri Fischer, 56, who was trapped inside her attic with her husband, Thomas, who had only a flashlight and a small hammer to open an escape route.
Fischer held out little hope for herself.
The Wisconsin transplant, who moved to Fort Myers Beach a year ago, wrote a goodbye text to her family.
But that act of defeat lit a fire inside Thomas.
“He broke my husband's heart.
He went through the roof,” Fischer said.
Around 3 in the morning, the couple rushed to help those trapped in the motel, which had been wedged right in front of their house.
“We heard their cries for help.
We keep yelling that we know they are there,” Fischer said.
For the first time, even in the dark, Fischer was able to see the true nature of the hurricane's destruction.
The water was raging.
The houses were on top of other houses.
Boats were thrown everywhere.
"It's like being in a war zone," he said.
The Fischers tore down pieces of the motel's roof and created a path, made of rubble, so people trapped inside could get out safely.
“It must have been terrifying.
They had to stay there all night,” he noted.
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Fischer went to check on other people nearby, following calls for help.
He found his next door neighbor dead through his kitchen window.
In a car outside her home, someone had scrawled a message on a piece of cardboard to alert authorities that a person had died.
“We had a sign that said a dead person.
We changed it to two,” the motel clerk said.
Surveying the wreckage, taking the consequences
Turquoise concrete slabs remain where the Hideaway Village motel stood for some 60 years, a favorite lodging for tourists and locals alike.
Hurricane Ian wiped out dozens of beachside bistros and tiki bars, resorts and other businesses in Fort Myers Beach.
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This has dealt a crippling blow to the economy of Southwest Florida, which relies on tourists and part-time residents who typically arrive in the late fall and stay through the winter, an influx known locally as "season," said Victor Claar, economist at the Florida Gulf Coast University Lutgert School of Business.
This year's season "is going to be very difficult, because even if the snowbirds want to come back, unless they own existing properties, it's going to be difficult to find a place to stay because a lot of places were destroyed," Claar explained. .
To make matters more difficult, Ian's destruction has also exacerbated economic pressures on the local workforce, particularly middle-class people working in the service sector.
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Nearly 29,000 people work in hotels and restaurants in Lee County, where Fort Myers Beach is located and where 60 people were killed in the storm, officials said.
Before the storm, a housing boom made it difficult for those workers to find affordable housing.
The storm eliminated many of the affordable housing options.
That could force workers to move to other parts of the country.
“Some were already on the margins.
This is only going to intensify that pressure,” Claar said.
Radabaugh is among those who are homeless and jobless.
She was in the water for more than six hours and had to cling to a balcony, but came out of the storm bloodied and bruised, with broken ribs.
“It seemed like I was the last person on Earth,” he said.
All of his belongings had been washed away, except for the sneakers on his feet and Bubbles, his 6-month-old goldendoodle, who he found standing on a pile of rubble, tail wagging, just before a Guard helicopter US Coastal will swoop down to rescue them.
Michelle Radabaugh found her dog Bubbles on a pile of rubble.Michelle Radabaugh
"Every last thing I had, it's gone," said Radabaugh, who is staying with one of his daughters in Wichita Falls, Texas.
His ribs and lacerations have healed, but Radabaugh still has a persistent cough, two weeks after the storm, from inhaling so much water.
"Physically, I'm fine.
Mentally and financially, no,” she said.
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The other motel employee said he has relied on his family and friends.
But he is grateful that his son has not only endured but is alive to celebrate his 11th birthday.
Back in Dayton, the Maston family prepares to say goodbye to Harris-Miles, whose funeral is scheduled for Saturday.
Affectionately called Nene and known as the life of every party, Harris-Miles was a home health aide and mother of two boys and two girls.
“Everyone who knew Nene knew that she loved to have fun.
He loved to cook.
She loved to decorate.
She made necklaces.
She loved her children,” Maston recounted.
"We were always together," Maston added.