Paradise Lost

Do you have a place you love? Maybe it’s one you return to year after year, building layers of memories atop each other like decoupage. Maybe it’s somewhere you’ve only been once, but it stays imprinted on you, and you hope and believe you’ll return eventually. Maybe it’s the place you hope to live someday. Maybe it’s the one where you already live.

For us, that place was Sanibel Island, a picturesque barrier island on the Gulf of Mexico in Florida that is part wildlife refuge, part beach paradise. I’ve been fortunate enough to visit Sanibel for more than thirty years; my husband has been going there since he was three years old. We have family there, and hoped someday we might make it our home.

If you’ve been ingesting any news at all lately, you’re probably aware that Sanibel Island and the surrounding areas in Lee County, Florida were devastated by Hurricane Ian. The island took hours of slamming from 150 mph winds as the eye wall made landfall, and suffered from a storm surge that has been estimated as high as 12 ft above sea level.

Our son and my in-laws lived full-time on Sanibel; other family members had homes there as well. I haven’t been sharing here about what we’ve been going through during the past week; I’ve kept my knitting channels knitting-focused and kept my worries to my personal channels. I’ve shared a lot of information about the storm on my Twitter account, where a community of concerned families communicated what little were were able to glean after communication with our loved ones on the island was cut off.

But this is very much present with me right now, and I want to share that with all of you.

My 22-year-old son, who lives and works on Sanibel, was lucky enough to have a caring boss who invited him and a few others to shelter in her house on the mainland, in Cape Coral. Though much of Cape Coral was flooded by the storm surge, the house where he sheltered stayed dry, and after the hurricane passed he was able to get a flight from another part of the state to stay with us here in California for the foreseeable future.

My in-laws, whose only home is located in Sanibel, remained on the island through the storm. The last we heard from them early in the day the hurricane hit was a text that said the first floor of their two-story home was flooded. With the causeway to the island wiped out and no cell coverage in the area, we had a terrible next few days awaiting word. Finally, we learned that they, too, were safe. They have since been rescued by boat and friends on the mainland have provided a short-term place for them to stay.

The emotions of the past week have been overwhelming. I am so tremendously grateful that our family members are safe. It’s really the only thing that matters in all of this.

But as reports keep coming in about the condition of the island we love, the house that we thought of as our home there, and the wider area, it is clear that nothing will be as it was for a very long time, and perhaps not ever again. Damage on Sanibel and throughout Lee County — on Captiva, Pine Island, Fort Myers Beach, Bonita Springs, and even the inland communities of Fort Myers, Cape Coral, and many more — is being described as “catastrophic.” Images show that most of the older structures and many of the single-story structures on the islands have been wiped out completely. Newer buildings and those farther from the waterfront fared better but will need extensive repairs. Most of the structures still standing were flooded by the storm surge and are now filled with silt and mud.

The utility grid — water, sewer, power, cellular service and more — will need to be rebuilt before residents can return to begin the long processes of cleanup and repair. So, too, will the 3-mile-long causeway to the islands of Sanibel and Captiva, which was ruptured in at least five places. Many residents of Sanibel and the greater Lee Country area do not have homes or jobs to return to; they have lost everything but what they little brought with them when they left. Over people 100 statewide lost their lives.

My in-laws have lost the use of their home for a very long time. We don’t yet know the extent of what repair will take. We do know they have lost both their cars and everything that was in their lower level and garage. We believe that my son has lost everything that was in his single-story, first floor apartment, as well as his job — he worked on a restaurant on the island that will not reopen for a very long time, if at all.

In comparison, I have personally lost almost nothing: a few things we keep at my in-laws’ house that can eventually be replaced. The loss that remains with me, the one I can’t shake off today, is the loss of the hopes we had for more time in the places we loved that no longer exist. Again and again I check on another place on the island to discover it’s gone: Our favorite beach, our favorite restaurant, our favorite view. These are small losses in the scope of things. Maybe they’re all I can process right now.

How to Help

Volunteers, nonprofits, and government agencies have already arrived to begin the overwhelming jobs of meeting the area’s immediate needs for food, water, and short-term shelter, and others are working around the clock to rebuild public utilities, roads, and bridges. If you’d like to provide help from afar, here are agencies where you can donate.

Sanibel and Lee County are not the only places to have suffered terribly from hurricane Ian. Help is needed in Puerto Rico and Cuba, as well, where hurricanes Ian and Fiona left a trail of devastation. Organizations including the Red Cross, World Central Kitchen, and others are providing help in all the hard-hit areas.

As I think on everyone affected and the work ahead for so many, I leave you with an image from better times, of a view I hope I’ll someday get to see again.