A Fort Myers Beach business owner stresses recovery after Ian

Sharon Faircloth owns three businesses in Fort Myers Beach and lives on a canal in the Isle of Palms community, a bridge from the beach town. Her grey house had a tin roof and was built on stilts, so she turned the ground floor into an apartment. What once made up the space is now a pile of trash in front of her house due to flooding from Hurricane Ian.

“We’ve never had water in this house … the house was built in 2001,” Faircloth said. “But we could say, well, we might get some water downstairs. So, we put everything on it, so it was about 4 or 5 feet tall. But then it went up to 8 feet.”

To get into the apartment from the outside, we had to walk through the soaked box of family albums.

A generator powers a fan that dries out the former living space. The room is just a shell, only the wall studs remain. There is a small pile of salvageable items in the corner.

“It’s a bedroom,” she said. “Luckily, we have a fantastic staff. They’ve come in and we’ve removed all the drywall.”

Faircloth and her husband own three water entertainment businesses in Fort Myers Beach. Within a day, their livelihoods were destroyed and their homes in disarray.

Storm surge and high winds from Hurricane Ian essentially wiped out the heart of Fort Myers Beach. Restaurants, bars, shops and apartments from the central part of the island to the Matanzas Strait Bridge were either completely razed to the ground or blown up, leaving muddy debris overflowing.

Currently, Faircloth is focusing on restoring her home. Her business employs about 30 people, and they’re all out of a job, so she hires them to help her clean.

“The water is here,” said Fairblouse, pointing to the wall above her head.

“And I don’t know how you describe what’s on the floor. It’s like dirt, dirt. When we got here after a storm, there was about three inches of black soup mud in there. It would stick to your boots so much that you can not walk.”

Then Faircloth took me to the backyard, where there was a 30-foot boat that belonged to her next-door neighbor, sandwiched between two palm trees—the bow pointed towards her house.

“Fortunately, there was a palm tree there. Otherwise, it would have drifted straight into our house. And our neighbor…he called us during the storm. He said he saw boats drifting towards our house. So , he swam over and tried to put a line on it, then tied it to a tree and almost got swept,” she said.

We turned back to the apartment and climbed a short flight of stairs into the home. In the foyer next to the front door, there is a knee-high waterline. This is where she left the photo boxes to weather the storm, thinking they were safe.

“Then I guess the boxes must be floating, because when the water comes in, it comes in very, very fast,” Faircloth said.

There is another set of small stairs from the foyer to the main floor. It dries up there, so they have a safe place to stay.

“It was a total disaster downstairs, but at least at night, we could go upstairs and like OK and feel a little normal. There was no electricity, the water was trickling, but that was okay,” she said.

The water pressure is really low and their water needs to be boiled. But at least her home is still there. The business here, she is not sure.

“I can’t access them at all,” she said. “Our business is on the beach, so we do jet skis, paragliders, charter boats, all these fun things at the resort. So, resorts I know are devastated. I guess we expect to be out of a job for a year.”

She said her biggest concern is paying employees. Her plan is to take some work from FEMA or be hired by a marine contractor to help get back to work.

“We have boats, we have captains, we have people who want to work. So, I’m ready to make them work,” she said. “We’re just going to change our business model for a while. Then when the beaches reopen, we’ll go back.”

Faircloth has not been able to return to the beach because all of her vehicles have been damaged by the storm. Additionally, access on the bridge is limited due to search and rescue missions.

But for those who got there, it was a harrowing sight.

Major roads such as Old San Carlos Boulevard and Fifth Street turned into Estero Boulevard have been scraped to make room for emergency vehicles, and piles of sand and debris larger than trucks have been pushed to the sides of the street.

Mountains of debris stood between parked law enforcement convoys and flapping water.

The wreckage was mixed with clothes, hats and shoes from the destroyed tourist shop. Some still have safety labels attached.

Businesses and homes looked like bombs had been detonated from within – most were completely destroyed.

All that’s left of the iconic fishing pier that once jutted from the beach into the Gulf of Mexico are a few pilings and a ramp to it.

Copyright 2022 World University Federation Public Media – World University Federation 89.7. For more information, visit WUF Public Media – WUF 89.7.