Fort Myers bears brunt of Hurricane Ian

FORT MYERS (Atlanta News First) - On Thursday, thousands remain in the dark in Fort Myers.

According to poweroutage.us, roughly 2.2 million Floridians are without power, with roughly 500,000 of those in Fort Myers and Lee County.

“Everybody has taken a hard hit. It’s tough. Will y’all be back? We’ll be back and we’ll rebuild. Absolutely,” said Scott Kelly, who lives in North Fort Myers.

Kelly was sleep-deprived. He spent much of Wednesday and Thursday searching for anyone trapped from Hurricane Ian.

“We had to use a raft to get cats, dogs. I rescued 3 people in the raft. Took them out, elderly people,” said Kelly, from his truck, driving along the coast on Thursday.

Boats crashed in houses, houses crashed into houses, debris filled the city – punished from the Category 4 hurricane.

“That boat docks about a quarter of a mile that way,” said Sean Casey, staring at boat that crashed into his sister’s house.

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He was staying there when Hurricane Ian crashed over the coast into his sister’s one-story house along East Riverside Drive.

“There was a canoe floating in our kitchen, so I put all the dogs and cats in the canoe,” Casey said.

Casey was forced to swim to his neighbor’s house and climb over their balcony to safety.

“That was a pretty terrifying moment to the point where everything kind of stops,” Casey said, in an interview on Thursday.

Driving throughout Fort Myers, it was hard to find a house spared from damage.

Kelly said it took roughly 20 days for their neighborhood’s power to be completely restored.

“Emotionally we can’t even deal with it yet. Right now, we’re still in survival mode,” said Kelly.

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