A few miles meant the difference between life and death on the Florida coast when Hurricane Ian struck
Cots cover the floor of Hertz Arena, an ice hockey venue that has been transformed into a massive relief shelter, in Estero, Fla., on Saturday, Oct. 8, 2022. More than 500 people were still housed at the arena more than a week after Hurricane Ian struck the southwest Florida coast. FORT MYERS, Fla. — — Just days after Hurricane Ian struck, a crowd of locals gathered under a huge banyan tree at a motel's outdoor tiki bar for drink specials and live music.
“There's an interesting combination of location, the sturdiness of the structure people lived in, and means,” said Fuller. Life is very different for Shanika Caldwell, 40, who took her nine children to a mass shelter located inside Hertz Arena, a minor league hockey coliseum, after another shelter located at a public high school shut down so classes could get ready to resume. The family was living in a motel before the storm but had to flee after the roof flew off, she said.
For some, the recovery has been fairly quick. Barber shops, car washes, chain restaurants, a gun range and vape shops — lots of vape shops — already have reopened on U.S. 41, known in southern Florida as the Tamiami Trail. Many traffic lights are operating, yet residents of low-lying homes and mobile home parks just off the highway are still shoveling mud that was left behind by floodwaters.
Cheryl Wiese isn't homeless: For 16 years she spent the fall and winter months in her modest mobile home on Oyster Bay Lane, located at Fort Myers Beach, before returning to a place on Lake Erie in Ohio for the summer. But what she found after making the 24-hour drive south following Ian all but ruined her.
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