FORT MYERS SHORES, Fla. — Carmen White has lived in Fort Myers Shores for twenty years and the proximity to the water is part of teh attraction.
"The river is right there," White noted.
Hurricane Ian's wind and storm surge hit the barrier islands hard, disrupting lives and the "way of life" we're all familiar with throughout Southwest Florida. However, just go a few miles further inland, off the Caloosahatchee River, and the impact is still pronounced.
North Fort Myers.
Alva.
Olga.
As well as here in Fort Myers Shores, more than twenty miles from the mouth of the Caloosahatchee but, in White's case, about 300 feet from her own home.
"We didn't know what was happening outside but we knew what was happening inside," White told us this month as FOX4 was in Fort Myers Shores to check on hurricane recovery. "I was trying to put things up but it wasn't fast enough. It was just amazing."
White said, in the past, when the Caloosahatchee or the canals would bleed to the edge of their pool, that was the sign of high water.
This was much, much worse.
"We had our feet up on the pool table but, then, the water was hitting the flap, where the cover of the pool table is."
All told, White said water came up more than 3 and a half feet inside of their home. In this one particular neighborhood of Fort Myers Shores, along roads like River Forest Drive, Island Road or Marquette Boulevard, trucks with specialists in drywall, roofing, electrical, HVAC still drive up and down, meeting their appointments in the long path to full recovery from Ian.
We asked Carmen how she holding up from all of this, after learning they lost both of their SUVs, not small cars at all in the storm surge.
"Oh, fine! We're alive! You've got to keep on going. It's material stuff. I call it 'our decluttering era'."
She did not one step she is looking to take for the next major storm that approaches Southwest Florida. Like so many others, especially survivors of previous hurricanes and other storms, the Whites stayed amid the storm.
"I just think that, next time to tell us to get out, we need to listen," said White. "I think that the people in the news were right. You need to get out and, once it's up to here (pointing to her hips), you can't get out. The FEMA people said it was three and a half feet in our house. That's pretty high."
