The lighthouse at Sanibel Island, taken in November of 2021. The only structure left is the lighthouse. The white buildings, built in the late 1800s, are gone because of Hurricane Ian.
(Courtesy of Chet Wallace)
Our friends Aimee White and Paul Murphy lived on Sanibel Island before Hurricane Ian. They moved there in March of this year. We visited them a few days before the storm hit, on the weekend of September 24th. A good portion of our conversation that Saturday evening was about the approaching hurricane. None of us seemed to be that worried about the storm. Aimee and Paul even mentioned riding it out and that seemed to be their decision when we left Sunday morning.
Aimee and Paul helped us move from one area of southwest Florida to the other earlier this year and we returned the favor by helping them move in when they came to Sanibel Island. My parents, Roger and Mary Wallace, got to know them also because they helped us to move.
With the storm surge caused by Hurricane Ian that hit Sanibel Island, Aimee and Paul’s rental home and possessions were destroyed. It was a one-story cement block structure near the corner of Casa Ybel Road and Periwinkle Road, which is the main road that traverses Sanibel Island. Their rental was totally inundated with about seven feet of water, destroying most of what they owned.
At 5am on Tuesday September 27, when the alerts started coming in, Aimee got her phone and checked the weather app Windy, which was showing that the storm was starting to shift more toward the east and become a stronger storm from what had been previously predicted. She decided to get an Airbnb in Valdosta, Georgia and evacuate. They both planned to come back to Florida that Saturday, clean up debris and go back to work the following Monday. They had no clue that Hurricane Ian was going to be as severe as it was.
Aimee worked, and still works online, for CROW (Clinic for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife) as the Director of Development and Advancement, which before the storm was located on Sanibel Island. This facility is a hospital and rehabilitation site for all wildlife animals and ended up having to move off the island to operate after the storm. On that Tuesday morning Aimee decided to drive to the CROW facility at 7am to see what more needed to be done to ride out the storm. For a week before the hurricane hit, staff had been preparing the animals to be evacuated as well as the students who lived on the campus. Equipment had to be wrapped just in case the storm was severe. She left an hour and a half later to go back home. Paul, in the meantime, was getting things together. When Aimee returned home at 8:30 she helped Paul pack and they left about 10:15am.
They took their cat Stache with them. “I kind of took the crappiest clothes I owned. I literally threw some shorts, tank tops, and t-shirts in a bag and a couple pairs of shoes and the toiletries and I grabbed a couple of photos. I did do a second glance back and there were a couple of photo frames that have my daughter in them. I did grab those too.” Paul did the same thing. Basic stuff that was needed. Paul Murphy was a handyman on Sanibel Island and before the storm, he helped some clients and friends to prepare by “battening down the hatches” and securing outside furniture and other outdoor items. He planned to help them put everything back after the storm was over.
Aimee and Paul each had their own cars. They decided to take Aimee’s car when they evacuated. Paul left his car with all the tools he used for his handyman job inside. They then left for Valdosta, Georgia. It took them an extra couple of hours because of the evacuation traffic being so bad, especially in the Tampa area. Paul anticipated it to be a lot worse than it was. The weather wasn’t bad at all because they were riding ahead of the storm.
Aimee and Paul stayed at the Airbnb in Valdosta until Saturday October 1, the same day they planned to come back to Sanibel Island after the storm. The day of the storm, Wednesday September 28, they were watching the Weather Channel from the Airbnb. A live feed was located at the corner of Casa Ybel and Periwinkle. They watched live as their street got flooded from the storm surge. They could see the Bank of the Islands building to the right. They were devastated by what they saw. Aimee cried all that day. The following day they figured out what their next step needed to be. They posted on Facebook what happened to them and that they had nowhere to go. A good friend from Charleston, South Carolina reached out and mentioned that he had a duplex where they could stay. It was a rental property that he was fixing up and he said that they could stay there if they needed to at no charge. They drove to Charleston on Saturday and ended up living there for a month. That Thursday just after they got off the phone with this friend, the owner of the property they had previously rented from on Kure Beach, North Carolina called them saying that the same rental that they had stayed at before moving to Sanibel Island was available. Aimee burst into tears, thanking the lady. They moved back to Kure Beach on November 1. They love the area because relatives live nearby in Raleigh. They are both still traumatized by the experience of losing their home on Sanibel Island. Aimee said that she would come to visit, but to live, not at this time. Paul said “Time will tell. It’s a beautiful area. We had a great time the short seven months we were there. People were great. I feel really bad about people who have lived there their whole lives and lost everything. Unfortunately, people lost a lot more than we did. That doesn’t make the pain any easier for us. Part of me wishes that I could be there to help our fellow neighbors.”
On October 21, Aimee and Paul returned to Sanibel Island to see what they could salvage. “You can’t describe what we saw. The smell and the emotions. It was just too much.” Aimee said. They drove down from Charleston on October 20 and got a hotel in Sarasota. This was the closest place they could get a room. No rooms were to be had in southwest Florida. On the morning of the 21st they drove south and crossed the Sanibel Island causeway and spent most of the day there sifting through what was left of their belongings. By watching the live feed, the day of the storm, Aimee thought that they would find nothing left. They brought heavy duty garbage bags with them and brought N95 masks as well as gloves and boots. Getting on the island was not as bad as they thought. It took them only forty minutes when they thought they would be waiting for hours. The police there were slowly letting people get on the island. Aimee showed her hurricane reentry pass, and they were allowed to proceed. The causeway was awful to go over. “I was a little nervous driving over the causeway. I had seen the damage. I know they repaired it and had cars going back and forth on it all week. It makes you nervous driving over it and seeing the damage.” Aimee described how the beaches that existed on either side of the road didn’t look anything like they did before the storm. Piles of asphalt from the road were on either side. Looking at the water, it was all brown and black.
The smell on the island was unbearable. Aimee best described it as the smell of “pluff mud”, a type of silty mud that is found in the Carolina's where they live. “There is a smell that happens at low tide when that pluff mud is revealed from under the water. It is a sewer type smell. It is almost a sulphury smell. There is also a fishy smell to it.” They described Sanibel Island as a “nuclear holocaust” when they went over to the island after the storm. “Everything’s brown. There was absolutely no green. Just destruction everywhere you look.”
When they arrived at their place, there were dead fish in the house. They were everywhere. One was next to Paul’s car, which had been picked up by the surge and shifted totally around and found in some trees several yards from where it originally had sat. They saw bizarre things in the house. A plastic beach bag had floated from one side of the living room to the front door, everything in it untouched. The house was slippery, like a skating rink, because of the mud that was in the house. Their kitchen was off the living room and their refrigerator was in the living room turned on its side with their bicycles underneath. Bowls sitting on the table, as well as a business card that Paul had, sat untouched and dry even though the table had floated to another part of the room during the surge. A fragile stemless wine glass from a relative’s wedding that had Aimee’s name on it was in the kitchen on the counter when they left before the storm. Coming back Aimee found it in a totally different room, the bathroom around the corner, sitting in a basket on the bathroom counter where she kept makeup, completely unbroken.
The hallway leading to the bedroom and bathroom. Kitchen counter is on the right.
(Courtesy of Aimee White)
The kitchen and living room looking toward the front door
(Courtesy of Aimee White)
The bedroom. Notice the nightstand sitting on top of the headboard, leaning against a window.
(Courtesy of Aimee White)
It seemed that when the water came into their place, it was with such a calmness because the surge floated their belongings up and then placed them back down softly in different places. They believe that possibly the concrete structure of the house was keeping the surge from rushing in violently. But it was rushing violently outside because it moved Paul’s car with such fierceness.
They did have damage to one door because apparently urban rescue teams had gone into the house to check if anyone was inside. The door was pried open. They probably saw Paul’s car on the property and decided to check.
Looking into the structure from outside the front door. Notice the pry marks from the urban rescue team.
(Courtesy of Aimee White)
The only things that they could salvage were what they could bleach. Everything was moldy or covered in muck. They saved some dishes and coffee mugs. Silverware also. There were some champagne flutes on a top shelf that they could save. Aimee had a lamp that belonged to her great grandmother that they could salvage. It had water in it from the flood and now will have to be taken apart and rebuilt.
Aimee and Paul reflected on their brief lives on Sanibel Island. “It was wonderful. It was paradise. I had the sweetest little seven-minute drive into work. I could pop home if I needed to. He (Paul) was on the beach every day. He’d ride his bike and take a chair with him. We loved Captiva and loved going to all of the restaurants. With the people, everybody was so nice.”
Paul reflected on the weather that destroyed their home on Sanibel Island. “Mother nature is a very powerful force. No doubt about that.”
Thanks for learning!
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