One year after Hurricane Ian’s destruction, residents still struggle to pick up the pieces
A year after Hurricane Ian made landfall near Fort Myers, Florida, as a Category 4 storm, Floridians are still recovering from the storm’s devastating blow.
Let’s look back at AccuWeather’s coverage of the devastation from Hurricane Ian, which made landfall on Captiva Island, Florida, on Sept. 28, 2022.
One year after Hurricane Ian made landfall near Cayo Costa, Florida, as a Category 4 storm, residents in the Fort Myers area are still picking up the pieces.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) hotel assistance, which paid for shelter for many families who would have otherwise been left homeless, ended earlier this summer, but some families are still living in budget motels, RVs or even sheds in their backyard.
Photos have captured the Floridians' struggles and the slow recovery process after the intense hurricane struck, including the story of a FEMA civil engineer whose family lost three homes, and the Valazquez family, whose cat survived waters that rose nearly to the ceiling of their home. One stark image caught in the aftermath of Ian shows a skeleton sitting in a chair next to a sign that reads: "Just Waiting for the Insurance Check."
The storm was later determined to have reached Category 5 intensity over the Gulf of Mexico waters. Hurricane Ian killed 149 people, making it the deadliest storm in the state since 1935.
Drone videos of the aftermath showed the destruction caused by the storm's 13.8-foot storm surge, 155-mph winds and more than 2 feet of rain that spread across the peninsula to Florida's east coast.
At $113 billion, Hurricane Ian ranks behind only Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Harvey in 2017, both of which caused $125 billion in damages, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Ian plowed through the citrus groves in central Florida, costing growers $675 million. Glenn Beck, a citrus grower, told AccuWeather on Sept. 28, 2023, that the damage came at a bad time -- after 20 years of battling invasive insects in the industry -- but recovery from Ian’s damage alone will take years.
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