For anyone who directly experienced Hurricane Ian in September of 2022 a point was created: before Ian, and after Ian. That's whether you experienced utter devastation like so many did, or 'just' had your life severely disrupted.
Hurricane Ian made landfall near the small island of Cayo Costa just after 3 o'clock in the afternoon on Wed., Sept. 28 as a strong category 4 storm with winds exceeding 150 miles per hour and a massive storm surge that reached upwards of 15 feet in some areas. Tens of thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed or catastrophically damaged. Estero Island, where Fort Myers Beach is, was essentially washed over by storm surge, fundamentally changing the beach town's face and to some degree very nature. All of Lee County's barrier islands took major hits. Lee County lost water county wide for a few days.
In the months after Ian, with so many stories to tell, the folks at the Gulf Coast Writers Association embarked on a project to collect some of them for a book that could capture the moment — the beginning of the 'after Ian' if you will — from different perspectives from Southwest Floridians who experienced the storm. That project culminated in the 2023 book Storm Stories – Hurricane Ian: Stories of Survival, Heroism, and Humanity. We talk with two of its contributors to remember Hurricane Ian, and how it brought out the best in so many of us.
Guests:
Christie Zarria, co-editor of and contributor to Storm Stories – Hurricane Ian: Stories of Survival, Heroism, and Humanity and member of the Gulf Coast Writers Association
Robert N. Macomber, award-winning author and lecturer who wrote the book's forward
Click here to listen to our conversation with Mr. Macomber about six weeks after Ian.
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