The town of Fort Myers Beach on Florida’s southwest coast has been devastated by Hurricane Ian, a local politician said late Thursday.
“I’m about two-thirds up the island and I’d say 90% of the island is pretty much gone,” Fort Myers Beach Town Councilman Dan Allers told DailyExpertNews’s Don Lemon. “Unless you have a high-rise apartment or a newer concrete house built to the same standards today, your house is pretty much gone.”
The city, with a population of approximately 5,600 people, is located on Estero Island in the Gulf of Mexico.
Many people struggled to get higher amid the storm surge, Allers said.
“I’ve heard stories of people getting into freezers and driving the freezers to another house…and being rescued by higher houses,” Allers said.
Instead of where houses used to be, there is only rubble, the councilman said.
“Every house on the beach is gone,” Allers said. “Some of the houses in the side streets have completely disappeared, and there is nothing but a hole of water,” he said.
Allers, who had been evacuated to higher ground during the storm, later found that his own home had been lost.
“Everything inside was obviously gone,” he said, though the structure survived. “Maybe we can rebuild,” he added.
