The Daily - Florida After Hurricane Ian

Episode Date: September 30, 2022

As the sun came up over Florida yesterday, a fuller picture began to emerge of the destruction that Hurricane Ian had inflicted on the state and its residents.The Category 4 storm washed away roads, bridges, cars, boats and homes. The damage is so extensive that, according to the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, it may take years to rebuild.Guests: Patricia Mazzei, the Miami bureau chief for The New York Times; Richard Fausset, a Times correspondent based in Atlanta; Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, a national news reporter for The Times; and Hilary Swift, a photojournalist.Background reading: Data from NASA reveals how warm ocean waters in the Gulf of Mexico provided the fuel that turned Hurricane Ian into such a potent force.The scale of the wreckage was staggering, even to Florida residents who had survived and rebuilt after other powerful hurricanes.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

name is Captain Tim Rushing. It looks like it's 5.52 p.m. Naples, Florida. I got flooded out of my house earlier this afternoon. The day began with a lot of wind. The power went out at like 720, cranked up the generator, had the whole house running, air conditioner is fine, messed around making some food, looked out and saw puddles in the road. And I'm like, oh, big storm surge, isn't that something? Then urban legend, the storm surge, they never get it right. And then all of a sudden the road's wet.

And I'm like, hmm. And I look and it's got a little current to it. I go about my business, messing around, watching TV. Fifteen minutes later, starting to creep up the driveway. And I'm like, oh boy, I'm getting ready to pay for my complacency here. And I go in my shed and everything's floating. It's waist deep in there. Gas cans, leaf blowers, coolers. I go in my shed and everything's floating. It's waist deep in there.

Gas cans, leaf blowers, coolers. It's just like someone, you know, turned on the water faucet and filling up a bathtub. And the cats are like pissed. Like, what's going on, Dad? I told you we should have left this morning. I shoved the cat through the Tahoe. I was heading for dry ground. Wow. Look at the neighborhood.

Something I never really envisioned myself. At that point, I just wanted to get out of belly-deep water that was rapidly rising. Yikes! I mean, the whole neighborhood is underwater. Man, look at this. It's like driving in a frickin' river. Current is just runnin'. Cars with water halfway up them. Good grief, Charlie Brown.

I mean, I got out of there. If I'd waited 30 more minutes, it'd have been too long. Evacuate, they said. The last two weeks, I've had both generators tuned up. You know, I've just been slowly, systematically getting all my stuff ready. Wow. I just gambled, and this time I finally got burned. You can be ready for power, you can be ready for food,

you know, you can prepare for everything else, but you can't stop that water from rising. From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. The impacts of this storm are historic, and the damage that was done has been historic, and this is just off initial assessments. On Thursday, as the sun came up over Florida, a fuller picture began to emerge of the destruction

that Hurricane Ian has inflicted on the state and its residents. I think we've never seen a flood event like this. We've never seen storm surge of this magnitude, and it hit an area where there's a lot of people and a lot of those low-lying areas. The storm, a category 4 hurricane, washed away roads, bridges, cars, boats, and homes, causing damage so extensive that according to the state's governor, Ron DeSantis, it may take years to rebuild.

Today, Sabrina Tavernisi and I spoke with our colleagues across Florida, Patty Mazzei, Richard Fawcett, Nicholas Bogle Burroughs, and Hilary Swift about what the storm's aftermath looks like up close. It's Friday, September 30th. Hello? Hey, Patty. Hey, I was worried you couldn't get through. I'm glad you could. So, Patty, I am reaching you around noon on Thursday.

And I wonder if you can tell me exactly where you are. Where are we reaching you right now? I am in the parking lot of a gas station that has no gas, wearing my tall wader boots. And this is in Port Charlotte, Florida. And where is Port Charlotte in the grand scheme of this hurricane? Port Charlotte is one of several communities that dots Charlotte Harbor, which is an estuary from the Gulf of Mexico,

which is where Hurricane Ian's eye came in through the mainland on Wednesday. Well, just describe your journey into Port Charlotte. We drove in from the north, from Tampa, on Interstate 75. And mostly what was striking was that the water level on both sides of the highway sort of looked like the highway was between canals. And this area took a beating. As soon as you get off the highway, you just see power lines down, trees down,

tin roofs down. You know, there's not a single traffic light that is working. And as you got further into Port Charlotte, who did you talk to and what did they tell you? We went into a retirement community called Port Charlotte Village, where the neighbors had been under mandatory evacuation orders and were just starting to get back to see how bad it had been. And a lot of them couldn't actually tell

because the storm surge was still so high that they just couldn't, you know, they started reaching waist high, thigh high water. And a lot of these people obviously older because it's the retirement community, and they did not feel safe continuing into the surge to get to their homes. I saw a woman named Teresa Madden, who is 67, waiting back from her house. It's up to here. You won't get very far. I asked her if she was okay. Careful, careful, man.

You know, because these waves of water are coming through. And she said, oh, I've been here since 7 in the morning, walking to my house with her husband and their two little dogs. And we're not native to here, so people are like, watch out for the red ants. They come in big balls. One guy said, I just saw an eel swim by. I'm like, what the for the red ants. They come in big balls. One guy said, I just saw an eel swim by. I'm like, what the hell? How long have you lived here? One year today.

Are you a Floridian or is this your first hurricane? First. Oh my goodness. They moved here a year ago and renovated their mobile home for their retirement. They came from Indiana. There's a lot of Midwestern retirees in this part of the state. And they had actually been in Indiana on business when they found out about the hurricane. At 10 o'clock Monday night, we jumped in the car, drove 18 hours straight through down here to put those storm things up and went to bed because we hadn't slept since Monday morning. The power went out. I wear a CPAP machine. And I kept having dreams all night. I was suffocating. Oh, no.

I really was because I think our power went out right after we went to bed. Wait a minute. She wears one of those apparatus that, like, if there's no electricity, means you can't breathe. You can't breathe well, right. So they woke up in the middle of the night. They started packing what they could in the dark. I made sure that our safe was locked up and it's waterproof, fireproof.

You know, she grabbed like important papers. I took two bathing suits. Tell me why. I have no idea. And they left for their friend's house where they spent the storm. And so they were coming back and not knowing, you know, if they had lost their retirement. And then I got tied up in knots on the inside and we didn't know really how to get through here. They hadn't. They had some roof damage and stuff like that. But I think it was that fear, you know, that after all that, here we are, you know, waiting through storm surge to get to our

house. You know, what's the worst thing, honestly, about all this that really upset me the most coming into it? We've got over $200,000 in our home. They gave us insurance for $68,000. And they don't really do mortgages on these places. You just have to cough up the cash. When you're old, and everybody in Indiana is like, just let your house flow away.

Dude, that's all of our cash. You said that this couple had just moved to Florida. I get the sense that Southwest Florida has experienced a lot of growth. So how do they fit into that? Florida has drawn a lot of people even before the coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic probably accelerated that. It is the state with the highest net migration from people from other states over the past few years. And this couple was an example of that. And I actually asked Theresa Madden if this had

changed her mind, you know, experiencing this hurricane, going through this scary natural disaster. Does this make you feel differently? She said, no, no, we love Florida. But last year, it was just a perfect fall. We didn't have any scary things. You know, we knew this was a possibility and hopefully it won't happen again. So you're finding that when people weigh the risks of a hurricane and the cost of rebuilding

and the cost, of course, of life and death against the benefits of being on the water in Florida and waking up and looking out and seeing all that they choose to live on the water in Florida. So far. Planners have been warning about this overdevelopment along the coast for a long time. But I also think people find it very appealing to live near the water. And I know that I have interviewed many people over the years who are willing to risk it. Well, drive safely. Stay safe.

Thank you. Thank you for letting people know what's going on here. Of course. Thank you for letting people know what's going on here. Of course. Thank you for reporting it. We'll be right back. Richard? Yes. Hey, it's Sabrina. Hi. Hi. Where are you right now? I spent the night in Orlando. So yesterday was really trying to get a sense of what people were doing to prepare. Florida's got so many

trailer homes. And this one that I went to yesterday was just absolutely lovely, where the front lawns and gardens are very well tended. They're kind of exploding with flowers in that very lush way that you can do in Florida. Everything, you know, the fresh coat of paint is obviously a place that people took really great pride in. You know, these are very modest homes. And when I got there, there was a fire truck that was going through the neighborhood of the recording saying, you need to get out of here. You should be in a more structurally sound building. We can't help you after 2 p.m. It was at that point that it was anticipated that the

winds from the first serious bands of the hurricane were really going to start hitting. I see. And they did. I think I went back to this massive hotel that I'm staying in downtown. It's just built like a bunker within a bunker. Although it does have an outward-facing window. And I tried to sleep last night, but this is just one of those that just lasted so

long and it just you know the the sound would go from bad to kind of like very bad and um there's a real kind of like violence to the way the rain would hit the the exterior window like it really felt like the building was kind of under assault. It felt like it was being strafed. And what's the most surprising weird thing you've seen? I mean, hurricanes are strange like that as well. Well, the most surprising thing I saw was, you know, sometimes when you cover these things, there's just an image. And after Katrina, I remember being down in the Fulbright Marigny, this beautiful neighborhood that's just next to the French Quarter, a place I'd spent a lot of time as a young person. And somebody had let out just this beautiful white horse who was just kind of snorting and bucking and going up and down while I think the 82nd Airborne was marching around. Just so bizarre and and the the

iteration of that that i saw yesterday was you know where it's just kind of an image that sticks with you was this pristine 1954 ford i think it was called a crest line or something that was black and white and just it looked like it just rolled off the the showroom floor like in the Korean War era. I mean, it was just this beautiful car that just had all this personality. And you could tell the interior of it just looked like it had never had an ice cream cone stain on it. And it was under this flimsy carport in this neighborhood full of mobile homes. And I talked to the owner. He's just this lovely guy.

He's an 82-year-old retiree who works in the wastewater industry. He also noted that taking care of this car was important because it was the only way he gets around. He loves to work on old cars and thinks that new cars, starting around 1995, stopped having any personality and you're just one of those guys. And, you know, to me it was, you know, kind of this sense of this cupcake, you know, that's just about to be stomped by, you know, some kind of Godzilla creature, you know, like this, this thing of this immaculate beauty. I mean, I'm not some huge car guy, but any living, breathing human being

would just pay homage to the care and just the luminous beauty of this machine. And it's under this kind of this rickety carport and the storm is coming and the fire truck is rolling through. And you just think that this is almost like a, you know, like a dream image of ominous times to come this is the guy who like a lot of people down here has had a lot

of experience with hurricanes i think he he first came down to florida in the armed services in the in the 50s and he was kind of back and forth, but he settled down permanently, I think, a few decades later. And, you know, on the one hand, you know, people might say, you're so stupid, why don't you just leave and go to the shelter and blah, blah, blah. Well, you know, I mean, one,

sleeping in a basketball gym with strangers is just not the most pleasant thing to do. And then, you know, in a way, you have to just kind of respect people's calculated risks. Hi. Nick. Hi. It's Sabrina from The Daily. Hey, how's it going? Good. Good. Okay. So it's 1.53 p.m. Where are you right now and what are you seeing? I am. I just left Fort Myers, this community, really right on the water. So a lot of trees had fallen, boats that had been pushed from one side of a river to another. And the neighborhood we were in was a small kind of semi-suburban neighborhood. They obviously

are in a very bad position when it comes to rising waters. And so I spent much of the morning with an 84-year-old woman. How long have you lived in this area 37 years wow right here or yeah wow her name was marion burkholder she was a retired bank teller where were you before then michigan okay before that cincinnati okay before that michigan before that scotland wow Cincinnati. Okay. Before that, Michigan. Before that, Scotland. Wow. Very cool. And Nick, when did she first see the storm? Like, when did it first come to her? Things were starting to get worse at some point last night, and she thought she had some time to prepare things. She said she just made a pot of coffee and that it was still plugged in but that she saw the water rising. The water was coming over my

seawall kind of like the beach where you have the breakers. She was getting a little worried but then her neighbors from across the street just came over unexpectedly these two sisters to help her. And they said no you have to come so I went over there. By the time I got over there, the water was coming in their back door where their swimming pool was. And as the water kind of rose and rose up to, you know, past waist level. Wow. It was waist level?

Yeah, in the home. Yeah. And then they said the plan was to get a dinghy. And they put her in this small gray dinghy. So anyway, I sat in the dinghy and there was nothing I could do. So I just used a plastic cup and I bailed water. Wow. And Marion, she told me she was using a plastic cup, a tiny plastic cup,

because the dinghy started taking on water. And so she was just trying to scoop as much as she could out of this dinghy as it was rising. So Marion was sitting in this dinghy, and next to her was one of her neighbors. There were five of us, two cats and a dog, and I stood there with a knife. My dog was to cut the screen to let us out. Wow. So we could get on the roof. Oh my goodness. Holding a knife because they thought the water might rise so high that they would have to cut a hole in this screened in porch ceiling so that they could get out. Wow. Eventually the water went down in the early morning. They didn't have to use the knife

thankfully and the place was a mess. And did you get any sleep at all? Yeah. On that mattress in there or the air mattress on the table? Yeah I saw that. And Marion slept for an hour or a couple hours on an air mattress on top of basically a dinner table in this neighbor's home. But they were certainly safe, and everyone very grateful to be alive and be totally uninjured, but coming to terms with what the next few months of their life might be like. They're with the New York Times. Yeah, sure. Do you mind if I take pictures?

Okay. There was another couple who also had a pretty chaotic night with the floodwaters rising. What were their names? Marvis and Harry Long. How long have you all lived down here? Since 1992. Wow.

He's going to be 98. Wow. So Marvis is a 96 year old woman and her husband Harry is 97. And when we walked into their home they were in great spirits but had an unbelievable night. Water was coming in just like waves in here. The doors and drawers. Right. All my linens and everything just like that see. Yeah. It was up to our ways. No one expected the water to come so quickly. That's what several people said that they thought it would rise

slowly. They thought they would you know see it coming that they'd be able to prepare in some way but that instead it had rushed in in a lot of cases. They said that the water was rising so high that they were on their bed and it was floating around the room. Wow. Everything floated. And when the water started rising and the bed started floating, were they trying to get out? Like what ended up happening to them? So they had hoped that the fire department or someone was going to pick them up last night. It seemed like they had a few different plans that fell through, that being one of them. Another, they seemed to be hoping to go to a friend's home they had packed their three

hats into crates and had gotten some things together but you know no one came for them and I think at some point they tried to go to their garage to see if they could get their car out couldn't get the garage yard with no electric and couldn't get the car out and then the next thing of course now the car's float was flooded oh next thing, of course, now the car was flooded too. That's how high it was in the garage. Yeah. So, you know, when we found them, they were just kind of lying on top of the bed, just hanging out, you know, trying to stay dry as there was, you know, water still in their home. And they have a small pool and a kind of patio area that was just filled with murky brown water.

They say that because, you know, everything here is safety tanks. They say this is sewer. Yeah. And where are they going now, the Longs? I mean, they can't stay in their house, it sounds like, right? Well, you would think so. So this volunteer group offered to bring them, they basically, the only place they could bring people quickly was a truck stop with a convenience store that was closed. So where we're going to take you is a love truck stop under a semi-truck port until we can have someone take you to a shelter. Would that be okay?

Oh, I don't want to go to a shelter. I've got cats. A couple said that they'd rather just stay there and keep in touch with their family about getting somewhere else. They didn't want to go to a shelter because they were partially worried about their three cats and handling all of that. So I think for a lot of people who didn't leave before the storm, figuring out what to do now that their homes are pretty much impossible to live in is definitely a big challenge. Quite a few people sounded like had family only far away, like in the Midwest or somewhere. The hotels are obviously all booked up around here. And the shelters, I mean, are certainly an option to stay safe at the last minute.

But it's a really hard choice to make to go to a shelter where you might not be able to, I mean, especially with mobility issues. I mean, one of the people today was just saying, I can't go to a shelter if they're just giving me a space on a floor because I can't even get down and lie down and get back up. Yeah.

It was very difficult options. Yeah. Nick, thank you so much for talking to us from your really, really kind of amazing, crazy night. Oh, of course. Yeah. Thanks so much. This is Hilary Swift. I am a photographer for the New York Times. I am a photographer for the New York Times. It's 5.19 p.m. and I am in North Fort Myers, Florida. So earlier today I was over at Fort Myers Beach, which is a small island. Normally, it's really, really pretty because you can have this beautiful view of a bay and all these boats and the harbor. And it's this gorgeous beachfront.

But today, I've been in four different hurricanes for the New York Times. And I hadn't really ever seen anything quite like this. And I hadn't really ever seen anything like quite like this. It really just was reminding me of images that I had seen in various war zones over the years. Like it looked like something out of Syria or out of Iraq. It was these almost shelled out looking buildings in some places and then like completely flattened buildings in other places and then just like this concave sort of dipping down rubble into the street which was then covered in several inches of sand. You know everybody was just walking around with their jaws on the floor. you know, everybody was just walking around with their jaws on the floor.

I came across a group of young men who were going through, I think it was a pizza shop or what, where there used to be a pizza shop that they used to work at. And they were collecting little like mementos from there. One of the gentlemen had just lost his home on the other side of that island, and his friend who was with him had also lost his home and lost his job the day before. So, you know, these kids were in pretty low spirits, but, you know, as I was walking away from them, they turned around and said, well, we can only go up from here because it can't get any worse.

At one point, we were walking with some search and rescue folks, and one of the gentlemen pointed over towards this peach-colored house that had had some green flowers drawn on it that I thought was really beautiful. But there was a lot of rubble next to that. And he said that they had just found a woman who was dead in the rubble. And we're pulling her out of that at that moment. As of Thursday night, Florida officials said they expected a significant number of deaths from the storm, but no firm number had emerged. So far, more than 700 Floridians have been rescued from floodwaters, and 2.4 million residents remain without power.

Meanwhile, Hurricane Ian, which had been downgraded to a tropical storm, re-intensified and became a hurricane once again. It is now expected to make another landfall, this time in South Carolina, later today. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a rare admission of error in his approach to the war in Ukraine, acknowledging in televised remarks that his government had made mistakes in carrying out a large-scale military draft that has angered families across the country. Putin described cases of men who had been wrongly drafted, such as fathers of three or more children, men with chronic disease, or those above military age, and said that all of them would be released from service. The admission came on the same day that Putin announced plans to formally annex four regions of Ukraine on Friday

Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Saporizhia, after voter referendums in each that have been widely denounced as shams. The annexation will, in the eyes of Putin, officially make those areas Russian territory, despite the fact that Russia does not fully control them, and that Ukraine still claims each of them as its own territory. Today's episode was produced by Nina Feldman, Sydney Harbour, Eric Krupke, Jessica Chung, and Rachel Quester, with help from Luke Vanderpoek. It was edited by Patricia Willans and Lisa Chow, contains original music from Marion

Lozano and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lindsay Garrison, Claire Tennisgetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon-Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Chris Wood-Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson,

Chris Wood, Jessica Chung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Lee Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Mark George, Luke Vanderploeg,

MJ Davis-Lynn, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Michael Benoit, Liz O'Balin, Aastha Chaturvedi, Rochelle Banja, Diana Nguyen,

Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badajo, Rob Zipko, Alishaba Etube, Muj Zady, Patricia Willans, Rowan Nemisto, Jody Becker, Ricky Nowetzki, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reed, Carlos Prieto, Sophia Milan, Ben Calhoun, and Susan Lee. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Schumann, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Des Ibogua, Wendy Dorr, And And And

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