After Hurricane Ian, ‘I’ll Never Go Back to Live in Florida Again’

Keith and his wife, Tenka Buchholtz, originally from the icy plains of Michigan, came to spend every winter in Florida and have settled there permanently for four years, in Fort Myers, on the east coast of the peninsula. When Hurricane Ian hit, the two retirees didn’t leave. They went to the asylum with their daughter. Lakeside house, but concrete, insulated with hurricane windows and elevated. They thought there was no danger, because the eye of the storm had made landfall. We couldn’t even hear the wind inside.Sitting on his porch, Keith Wacholtz explains, it’s 24 degrees and the autumn sun is shining again.

The house didn’t move, but that counted without rising water, on this disastrous Wednesday, September 28. The water rises, nearly two metres, until it touches the first floor. Tinka Buchholtz doesn’t know if the water will continue to rise. “Of course I thought I was going to die. We have time to gamble in these moments. This hurricane made me take ten years. I will never go back to live in Florida again” Septuagint confirms. The couple’s home was destroyed, unlike their daughter’s. It was decided that they would return to settle in their native Michigan, north of Grand Rapids.

In this hurricane, it wasn’t the wind that surprised. It sowed havoc its way, but in a predictable way: By reinforcing its anti-hurricane standards, the most stringent in the country, Florida built structures that withstand better and better. Certainly, the bridges that lead to the neighboring islands of Sanibel and Pine Island have been swept away. But homes built to Florida standards held up, rickety log cabins and recreational vehicles flew out, coconut palms uprooted and trees uprooted.

The street was swept by the sea

No, the unexpected phenomenon is related to the rising water, caused by the cyclonic depression, amplified by the tides and winds and the shallow depth of the bay. And so, Keith Konigam, 74, a retired businessman from Delaware, didn’t really fear for his life: his solid two-story house, and he also stayed there during a storm. Suddenly, as the hurricane reaches its peak, he receives a phone call from his neighbours, a married couple in their 70s: they only have one floor and they ask for refuge in his house. He sees them crossing the street swept by the sea, blown by winds above 100 km / h, from the water above the belt. “I thought they wouldn’t,” In his garage, he says, a cap defends the right to bear arms over his head.

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