I live in Cape Coral. Everything is destroyed. We have a newer house with updated code and roof is fairly new, so while pretty damaged, it is livable. Everything else on property is leveled. More fortunate than most around us. Just now seeing what what I heard happening to places like Ft. Myers Beach. Had a friend evacuate when water was about 4ft in their single story house. Got lucky as water ended up over the roof.

I'm sorry to hear of all the grief down there. I haven't seen much about it thanks to our internet being in and out. What I have seen, I can't even imagine. I guess the way to look at your situation is, because you still have a place to live you can somehow help those who don't. Helping a neighbor with clean-up or providing hot meals. 

When I worked at Habitat for Humanity of Jacksonville we were building a house next door to a very generous man who kept us warm throughout the day with coffee and a giant pot of chili. That day we were there to shingle the roof was cold. Hell, it was frigid with a low of 25° that morning and it "warmed up" to the mid-40s. Twelve years later I remember the generosity of that man better than I remember pretty much anything else from that year. It truly was a blessing.

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Stayed at a little mom and pop place called Hideaway Village a couple of years ago on Ft Myers Beach on Estero Blvd, across from beachfront houses and condos. A modest and very affordable little 10 unit complex in two separate buildings with a modest sized pool. Was watching some storm cleanup coverage over the weekend, and happened to see the pool in one of the drone flyovers. However, i was sad to see that the two units were completely gone.

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"Remember Red, Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies."  - Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption

So much damage down south. What is the best way to help do you guys think?

Donate blood to ARC, Life South, Oneblood, or other orgs like this (not selling plasma). Those communities will likely have need for blood products and their own banks are likely unable to open or take donors directly. They'll depend on nearby orgs to chip in with keeping supplies up.

Donate food or money to charities that are on-site in the areas and helping those people displaced or impacted by the storms. (especially the food banks and shelters in those areas that likely lost all warehoused goods in reserve). Whether you believe or not, a lot of churches and civic orgs will have units that will travel to these areas to assist, and they will usually call for donations of food, water, clothing.

If you have capability, volunteer with any of those units that are traveling to serve.

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I live in Cape Coral. Everything is destroyed. We have a newer house with updated code and roof is fairly new, so while pretty damaged, it is livable. Everything else on property is leveled. More fortunate than most around us. Just now seeing what what I heard happening to places like Ft. Myers Beach. Had a friend evacuate when water was about 4ft in their single story house. Got lucky as water ended up over the roof.

Eesh. glad you're safe, structures can be rebuilt in time.

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Stayed at a little mom and pop place called Hideaway Village a couple of years ago on Ft Myers Beach on Estero Blvd, across from beachfront houses and condos. A modest and very affordable little 10 unit complex in two separate buildings with a modest sized pool. Was watching some storm cleanup coverage over the weekend, and happened to see the pool in one of the drone flyovers. However, i was sad to see that the two units were completely gone.

Unfortunately all the old or modestly priced stuff isn't up to code.

I hope the city actually puts a seawall and/or dunes in that is bug enough to handle storm surge or force everything be built high enough and with supports that won't break in the tide.

You can't just ignore the risk but most beaches in FL aren't prepared.

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Stayed at a little mom and pop place called Hideaway Village a couple of years ago on Ft Myers Beach on Estero Blvd, across from beachfront houses and condos. A modest and very affordable little 10 unit complex in two separate buildings with a modest sized pool. Was watching some storm cleanup coverage over the weekend, and happened to see the pool in one of the drone flyovers. However, i was sad to see that the two units were completely gone.

Unfortunately all the old or modestly priced stuff isn't up to code.

I hope the city actually puts a seawall and/or dunes in that is bug enough to handle storm surge or force everything be built high enough and with supports that won't break in the tide.

You can't just ignore the risk but most beaches in FL aren't prepared.

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That would be ideal, but most of Ft Myers Beach and Bonita Beach is so flat that a seawall or dunes wouldn't work. And residents would never go for it anyway. It would be so ugly that it would drive away tourists. They'll just keep rolling the dice that the storms don't hit them, and if they do, they'll just rebuild. There's no shortage of moolah down there.

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"Remember Red, Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies."  - Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption

Looks like the structure survived, but we have damage to deal with. Still accounting for staff. 
We have a skeleton crew there now on a generator preparing meals for displaced people in the community and power line workers who are making their way in to restore power. 

Lots of damages to homes in the area and the mobile home/RV/trailer parks are half razed to the ground. Most of those folks evacuate, but ...

You're a good man for providing those meals for those displaced folks.  Anyone on those barrier islands of Sanibel, Ft Myers, Captiva, Gasparilla and Casey Key should ALWAYS have the good sense to evacuate, but sadly, some just won't.  Same with those mobile home communities.  There are so many in the Port Charlotte/Punta Gorda area, along with Englewood, Venice and Cape Coral.  It's going to be a long rebuild.

Crazy stuff I've been seeing and hearing down here. 
Very lucky personally, but tons of friends and colleagues are in bad situations. 

The efforts from the local responders and those that have funneled into our area have been impressive in restoring power to many fairly quickly considering the damage. That may be the most positive thing I can say. 

It turns out that our restaurant and venue is next door to a large staging area for FEMA disaster relief and there are 400 Army reservists stationed there. 
We have taken on feeding the lot of them breakfast and dinner every day along with our patrons who grow in number each day. 
We have a skeleton crew of staff still, so it's has us all deep into overtime. We also can't get enough food to pull it off via distributor delivery, so we have a convoy of personal pickup trucks going each day to a distribution house in the next town. Getting gas has been tough until yesterday as more and more stations reopen. I worked my fifth 14 hour day in a row yesterday and finally took a little time off today. 

Next weekend we'll put music back on our stage and use the turnout to drive revenue for a fund to help individual families in our community that are struggling to get what they need. 

Gonna be a while before anything feels "normal" down here.

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Wow, that sucks NYC. I’m not 100% sure what it is you do, but if this was 3 weeks from now, I’d be more than happy to help pitch in some manpower. I know a lot of people had their lives flipped upside with that storm. Hopefully, life can get restored sooner than later for them.

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You're a good man for providing those meals for those displaced folks.  Anyone on those barrier islands of Sanibel, Ft Myers, Captiva, Gasparilla and Casey Key should ALWAYS have the good sense to evacuate, but sadly, some just won't.  Same with those mobile home communities.  There are so many in the Port Charlotte/Punta Gorda area, along with Englewood, Venice and Cape Coral.  It's going to be a long rebuild.

Crazy stuff I've been seeing and hearing down here. 
Very lucky personally, but tons of friends and colleagues are in bad situations. 

The efforts from the local responders and those that have funneled into our area have been impressive in restoring power to many fairly quickly considering the damage. That may be the most positive thing I can say. 

It turns out that our restaurant and venue is next door to a large staging area for FEMA disaster relief and there are 400 Army reservists stationed there. 
We have taken on feeding the lot of them breakfast and dinner every day along with our patrons who grow in number each day. 
We have a skeleton crew of staff still, so it's has us all deep into overtime. We also can't get enough food to pull it off via distributor delivery, so we have a convoy of personal pickup trucks going each day to a distribution house in the next town. Getting gas has been tough until yesterday as more and more stations reopen. I worked my fifth 14 hour day in a row yesterday and finally took a little time off today. 

Next weekend we'll put music back on our stage and use the turnout to drive revenue for a fund to help individual families in our community that are struggling to get what they need. 

Gonna be a while before anything feels "normal" down here.

Good on you man. I've been watching a lot of flyovers of Estero Island, San Carlos Island, Naples, Sanibel, Captiva and Gasparilla, Far and away, Estero got the worst of it, as I'm sure you know. It's 100 times worse than Mexico Beach in 2018, if for no other reason that the area is larger and has a lot of inland canals with marinas, which didn't fare well at all during this. Factor in the mobile home communities on San Carlos Island, and it's devastation on a scale that I haven't seen as a Floridian since Andrew. Seeing mobile home parks with nothing left but slabs and then a quarter mile north all those mobile homes piled up on top of each other like Lego building blocks is something to behold. Same with the boats; they are either piled up on top of each other in a 3-high pile, or they are scattered in places that no boat should be: on top of houses, cars, blocking roads and stuck in mangroves. Never mind all the ones that must have sunk. It's destruction beyond belief, until you watch some of the storm footage as it happened on the Wednesday it made landfall. Then you can believe it. Once the first responders finish their search and rescue operation and they allow volunteers back in, I'm hoping to get down there to contribute to the recovery efforts.

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"Remember Red, Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies."  - Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption

Wow, that sucks NYC. I’m not 100% sure what it is you do, but if this was 3 weeks from now, I’d be more than happy to help pitch in some manpower. I know a lot of people had their lives flipped upside with that storm. Hopefully, life can get restored sooner than later for them.

Unfortunately for most people their homes have to be completely checked before power can be turned back on. If a home is flooded, every appliance, outlet, wiring, and panel boxes have to be certified that power can be restored.

How do you certify everything is good? Well you need to gut the house. Drywall is probably destroyed and insulation needs to be removed or you are looking at mold and terrible smells staying in your house.

There is no quick fix and unfortunately it's going to be a long time for most people.

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You're a good man for providing those meals for those displaced folks.  Anyone on those barrier islands of Sanibel, Ft Myers, Captiva, Gasparilla and Casey Key should ALWAYS have the good sense to evacuate, but sadly, some just won't.  Same with those mobile home communities.  There are so many in the Port Charlotte/Punta Gorda area, along with Englewood, Venice and Cape Coral.  It's going to be a long rebuild.

Crazy stuff I've been seeing and hearing down here. 
Very lucky personally, but tons of friends and colleagues are in bad situations. 

The efforts from the local responders and those that have funneled into our area have been impressive in restoring power to many fairly quickly considering the damage. That may be the most positive thing I can say. 

It turns out that our restaurant and venue is next door to a large staging area for FEMA disaster relief and there are 400 Army reservists stationed there. 
We have taken on feeding the lot of them breakfast and dinner every day along with our patrons who grow in number each day. 
We have a skeleton crew of staff still, so it's has us all deep into overtime. We also can't get enough food to pull it off via distributor delivery, so we have a convoy of personal pickup trucks going each day to a distribution house in the next town. Getting gas has been tough until yesterday as more and more stations reopen. I worked my fifth 14 hour day in a row yesterday and finally took a little time off today. 

Next weekend we'll put music back on our stage and use the turnout to drive revenue for a fund to help individual families in our community that are struggling to get what they need. 

Gonna be a while before anything feels "normal" down here.

Thank you (collectively) for doing what you're doing. If it's not against the rules, share the deets when the fundraiser ramps up and we'll toss a few coins in the hat.

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