Category: Comm_Buildings_CN Downpours_CN En_So_Renew_CN FLORIDA_MN Hurricanes_CN PATA_Hurricane_2022_related

While hard-hit Fort Myers, Florida, continues its recovery from Hurricane Ian, some hope can be found 12 miles to the northeast at the planned community of Babcock Ranch. That's where Syd Kitson and his partners built an environmentally friendly, fully sustainable town that they hoped would be hurricane proof. Kitson, an eco-conscious developer and former pro football player, rode out the hurricane at Babcock Ranch. Unbelievably, none of the 5,000 people there lost power during the storm.

Outside his first-floor apartment where he had slept, Hurricane Ian moved violently and slowly over the Florida interior, dropping monumental amounts of rain on the low-slung landscape pockmarked everywhere with lakes and rivers, ponds and canals. The headwaters of the Everglades begin here. To the east the St. Johns River, the state’s longest river, flows north. Ian’s lumbering pace meant these waterways filled quickly.

A 57-year-old woman in the Sarasota area developed hypothermia and died after her roof caved in and she became stuck in floodwaters. A 96-year-old man drowned after getting trapped under a parked car in Charlotte County. In Fort Myers Beach, the body of an 85-year-old woman was found in a tree several days after the storm.

Senior Republican politicians in the state have opposed federal action against global warming, which is making storms like Hurricane Ian more destructive.

Hurricane Ian’s menace sent homeowners around Florida scurrying to safer parts while their technology stood sentry. Home camera security systems served as the unflinching eyes and ears for anxious people whose homes were in the storm’s wide and teetering path.

Few Places experienced hurricane Ian’s destructive power like Fort Myers Beach, Fla., and the surrounding area

The damage from Hurricane Ian will very likely run into the tens of billions of dollars and scientists say the United States can expect more severe storms like it as the planet heats up. They also say the risks of increasingly wild weather make it all the more urgent that cities and states take steps to protect people and property.

Crossing the causeway bridge from the mainland, visitors’ first glimpse of this cherished Gulf Coast getaway was often Point Ybel Light, an iron tower built in 1884 at the tip of the 33 square-mile spit of land, surrounded by a thick green mix of palms and seagrapes. Spot the lighthouse, and you had reached paradise.

Search and rescue efforts continued along Florida’s west coast as residents confronted the sweeping devastation and rising death toll wrought by Hurricane Ian, one of the strongest storms ever to make landfall in the continental United States.

Mitch Pacyna and his wife had weathered other hurricanes in their 27 years on this sandy stripe of barrier island and decided to ride out Hurricane Ian at home.