3 moments still haunt me Hurricane Ian Survivor Daniela Streva.
First Moment: When she sees the water levels starting to rise on Riverd Road, where she lives with her father.
Her neighborhood was completely dried up by Hurricane Irma, and despite warnings that storm surges would make this storm different, Shtereva was acting on that memory. She remembers a mild panic.
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Water kept flowing like a bucket in ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’
The next key moment involved duct tape. Shtereva began plastering the doors and windows, including the garage door that leads to the kitchen. Still the water rose. Naples She is a member of the Philharmonic Orchestra, Naples her community Instructor at her school and a professional violinist who is also a tutor, it permeated the garage where music was kept.
The sandbags she piled on her garage door — “useless,” she declared. I tried to stay one step ahead of that grasp by stacking things on the counter. It began to enter her floor-length windows, bedrooms and bathrooms. She knew they had to leave.
The third moment was Shterevas’ longest journey yet. It started in the bedroom. Recently, she had left her step stool on the roof of her house by some miracle that caused a problem with her air conditioning compressor.
She and her father, George, carried a ladder to the front door and tried to pull the door open. But the pressure between the water inside the house and the water outside held it tight. By the time they pulled it open, they were walking through chest-deep water. and could reach over heavily pruned shrubs.Steps to crawl over the roof.
Shtereva stowed her two cats, Pepi and Kalina, in the attic with plenty of food, and got hold of their passports, her American and her father’s Bulgarian. Her violin was placed on the highest possible shelf, with trepidation. She returned to get it before she was rescued.
“Was it worse that the violin got wet in the rain or had no violin at all?” she sighed, remembering her dilemma.
Her call to 911 went through. Shtereva, however, recalled being told that she would not begin operations until the winds subsided to below tropical storm strength (39 mph, around 3 p.m.).
snuggle up in the storm
The two huddled together in the storm for nearly two hours until a neighbor with a stepladder pulled them down as the water receded. Then, at about 6:30 p.m., county rescue boats flew down what is now the Livard River.
On Tuesday, Shtereva’s front yard was a pile of furniture and drywall. The bottom shelf of precious chamber music she kept in her garage looked like wilted lettuce. A Steinway baby ground, a treasured possession of her home, was submerged above the keyboard. The kitchen range and refrigerator where water got in and started to smoke were both soaked up to cabinet level. But she grieves the loss of her piano more.
“Another contribution to Ian,” she said sarcastically. Yet Shtereva finishes her chaotic tour of her home with a smile. She and her father are safe. Cats are safe. she has a violin
“Never in my life have I seen so much love and help from family, friends and complete strangers,” she declared. “Everyone was great.”
intense and surreal scenery
For artist Nick Rapp, the second-floor view from the building known as Gardenia House on Bayshore Drive was “very intense” when Bayshore Drive, the city’s official arts district, became a raging lake. I was capturing the “surreal” horizon.
“(I) even got a rescue mission to drag an elderly disabled person out of a window or I think he would have died,” he said in a sober email describing the storm.
“If we hadn’t tied up our paddleboards in case of an emergency… …if we hadn’t paddled out to help people and get them across safely, welcome them to our place… And find out about this man… Trapped in his place… Who knows what his fate will be,” he wrote.
But a consummate artist, Rupp spent part of the weekend painting a mural on top of a discarded plywood canopy. One has a giant dahlia in bloom, reflecting his optimism that ‘it will grow back’.
Victim of Ian: I hate Florida.i love florida
Lacey Swander finished in Florida.
It all started with Hurricane Irma five years ago. Getting wiped out again from Hurricane Ian is the final straw.
“We’re leaving,” Swaunder, 24, said. “It’s not OK when you see everything obliterated. I can’t see it anymore.”
She, her husband Nick, and her son Oliver live in an apartment at 1555 Blue Point Avenue in Oyster Bay on the eastern edge of the city of Naples.
Since Ian they started squatting in an empty unit upstairs. It certainly didn’t last long.
What is unknown is that along the coast east of Collier and part of the south of U.S. 41, people lost all their precious possessions in a 4-foot storm surge, and have a common feeling never seen before. number. Many people in East Naples have lived in the neighborhood for decades.
Collier government officials have not released an estimate of how many homes would be uninhabitable, with drywall, beach chairs, folding tables for furniture and blow-up mattresses for beds.Royal Harbor In , Oyster Bay and Bayshore, there is a truck-deep pile of household debris.
When the water started running down the street, pushing it up to about four feet into the ground floor apartment, Nick and Lacy Swaunder grabbed whatever they could and went upstairs to their neighbor’s house.
“I thought the whole building was going to collapse,” she said.
She feared her family would perish. Even though she grew up in Fort Myers, she has no doubts that they are leaving.
“We’re never going back to Florida,” Nick Swaunder said.
This sentiment may have been on the minds of many since Ian devastated Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel, and Pine Island in a Category 4 storm.
Collier’s residents know the worst has been spared, and while normalcy seems to be returning to the community, Lee’s vast numbers of people are living it upside down. We have a long way to go before we can catch a glimpse of
“I don’t want to rebuild”
Wes Thrasher, 62, has lived for 21 years at 2135 Andrew Avenue, at the south end of Bayshore Drive near Naples Botanical Gardens. At least he had three feet of water in his house.
He accuses 230 homes on the edge of Bayshore from being encroached on by Collier Reserve Isles. There, truckloads of truckloads were hauled in to raise the swampy lowlands.
“We are sitting in bowls now,” he said. “I’ve never had this problem before.”
He considers his home complete and that’s fine. Rebuilding takes too long.
“I don’t want to rebuild,” he said.
“I never thought I’d get this far”
Marianne Lambertson, 52, moved into one of her new homes built in 2018 at 3128 Woodside Avenue, also off the South Bayshore, this summer.
“It wasn’t high enough,” she said, estimating that the storm surge was four feet above the street and brought an inch of water into the house. “I honestly didn’t expect it to go up like this.”
On US 41 S. Pine Street, Marcelino Mendoza attempted to stay in a duplex where he had lived with two roommates for at least four years.
“The others decided to leave,” he said, later admitting he should have left too.
He put a piece of plywood on the front door, thinking he could slow down the water coming inside. It’s no use, he learned quickly. When the water came up to his chest he grabbed a stick to help him swim out.
A man in a nearby house on stilts, whom Mendoza had never met before, saw him and yelled for Mendoza to reach his house.
Upon reaching the house on stilts, Mendoza found himself one of several who were offered safe haven until the water receded. At that time, other people in the house said they found an alligator in the murky water about half a block away.
Mendoza hopes the landlord will repair the damage to the interior of the duplex so that she can stay there for the time being. He likes this area, it’s close to bus routes.
Cheney Laver, who was born and raised in Collier County, remains optimistic about southwest Florida, even though the land he purchased at 2918 Poplar Street in East Naples near Bayshore Drive has had several feet of water. He had converted it into a rental unit and now has to start over.
“This is the price you pay to live in Florida,” said the 48-year-old worker. “Once every few years, right? I always take this on the snow.
Harriet Howard Heithaus covers arts and entertainment for Naples Daily News/naplesnews.com. Please contact her at 239-253-8936.
This article originally appeared on the Naples Daily News. Deadly bodies of water wracked by Hurricane Ian in East Naples in the Bayshore Arts District