Surviving Hurricane Ian in a Fort Myers Apartment Complex [View all]

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Charles Bethea
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I’ve reported on hurricanes but this is one of the crazier survival stories I’ve ever heard. From Fort Myers for @NewYorker:

newyorker.com
Surviving Hurricane Ian in a Fort Myers Apartment Complex
Facing high winds, rising waters, and careening yachts, a group of neighbors managed a harrowing rescue.
4:57 PM · Oct 2, 2022

https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-south/surviving-hurricane-ian-in-a-fort-myers-apartment-complex

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https://archive.ph/3qRKL


Adam Rayhart is a flair bartender at a cocktail spot in downtown Fort Myers, Florida, the largest town on a seven-mile island that sits on the Gulf of Mexico. He moved there last year from Lehigh Acres, sixteen miles inland. The move was mainly to be closer to work, but having views of the water, he said, “were a plus.” The tattooed and bearded thirty-two-year-old has lived in Florida since he was four and has experienced a lot of hurricanes. “I can’t even remember most of their names,” he told me. When Rayhart saw predictions that Hurricane Ian was headed for the Gulf Coast, early last week, he did what he always does in anticipation of losing power for a few days: he charged his electronics, bought a couple cases of water and nonperishable food, and stocked up on batteries for his flashlights and lanterns. “I can live off Mountain Dew,” he told me, noting that he hadn’t even picked up the maximum number of cases of water allowed at his local grocery store. “I just need the water for my dogs.”

Rayhart has been living at Riverwalk, a fifty-unit apartment complex right on the Caloosahatchee River, just outside of downtown Fort Myers. He and a roommate, Eric Stebbins, Jr., who also works at the cocktail bar, share a second-story unit facing the Caloosahatchee, which is protected by a small sea wall. The steps leading up to their apartment are about fifteen feet from river’s edge. Their second-story patio overlooks the complex’s pool, a few palm trees, and a gazebo where they often hung out, talking about their day or sitting in silence and enjoying the sunsets.

They weren’t really worried about their apartment. Storm surge had never been a serious problem in the area, as far as Rayhart knew. But he helped a downstairs neighbor named Stefanie prepare her own apartment with sandbags, and he told her that she could shelter upstairs with him and Stebbins if necessary. Stefanie took him up on the offer, and the three of them hunkered down Thursday afternoon, in Riverwalk apartment #50.

“You could hear the wind out the door and through the windows,” Rayhart told me, describing Ian’s arrival. “It seemed like a typical hurricane. Waters were getting wavy and stuff, which was to be expected.”On his final walk outside to relieve his dogs, he tripped and broke a toe, but that problem was soon forgotten. He noticed that the barnacles on one of the river’s piers, visible the day before, had disappeared below the waterline. “I was, like, ‘O.K., water is rising up a bit,’ ” he told me. Then it began to pour over the little wall and onto the apartment’s pool area.

*snip*