I have survived Ian so far. I live in Iona which is Southwest of Ft. Myers and as the crow flies, less than ten miles for Sanibel. I evacuated to the Ft Myers Shores area which was not as bad as where my condo is but we still had hurricane force winds for hours. We got back to the condo Thursday morning and the destruction could just make you cry. Our condo survived pretty well. We are going to have to have the whole complex reroofed but the condo was dry inside. Storm surge came into our attached garage but didn’t enter the condo so we were the lucky ones considering the eye wall spent hours over where we live. You would not believe the devastation that is all around us. No power, cell phones go in and out, and trying to use the web for information is hit and miss. Some minutes we can get information and then the next is nothing. I am running a generator so when it is running I can get the local news that is up and broadcasting. I may be in the middle of the disaster but most of you guys are getting more information than we are which is frustrating.

Hats off to the local police, fire fighters and all the other local rescue personnel that are on the job. You have to remember that those guys are all in the same boat that I am in and they are still out there doing their jobs. I talked to a couple at the Port of Sanibel Marina and thanked them. There will be many stories of bravery and sacrifice from this storm that maybe Randy Wayne White will write a book about them. One story that I read was how Donald Trump did not evacuate which made me take notice. Why would Donald Trump have to evacuate. The only way that he was in danger was if he used his Sharpie again. We in Ft. Myers and the surrounding area were in a Hurricane. Donald Trump had just a breezy day. He was in the area that many evacuated to. Then on top of that he asked for donations again. What a piece of work.

I have read from Republicans that now is not the time to talk about Climate change. We should not use a disaster like this to make political points. When is the proper time to talk about climate change? If you talk about it before a disaster people are calling it fake news or that climate change isn’t real. If you talk about it during you are trying to take political advantage of a disaster. If you talk about it after you will be told that now is not the time because we have to focus on recovery. After recovery it will go back to climate change not being real and fake news. Do not tell me that now is not the time to talk about climate change and do not tell me that it is fake news. Recovery for this disaster is going to take years, not weeks, not months but years. We have to start slowing down climate change. It is too late to stop it but we have to start working before it kills us all.

I swear every politician in the State is trying to take political advantage of the disaster. I can only watch TV when I am running the generator but it seems that every time I watch the news I see our Governor DeSantis trying to look Presidential. I was watching him talking with the Sherriff at Matlachi which by the way is pretty much gone. He was trying to look very much like the leader that any governor should look like. Of course he has asked for assistance from the Federal Government which you would expect any governor to do. I would just like to remind everyone that when DeSantis was in Congress he voted against relief for New York and New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy. If I remember properly he felt that that hurricane relief was not the role of the Federal Government. During that speech on Matlachi that I saw I never once did I hear DeSantis or the Sherriff mention FEMA or the Biden Administration or any other Federal Agency besides the Coast Guard. Without that Federal Government Florida’s recovery will take much longer. Because of short sightedness on the part of many of the Republican Administrations in Florida our Infrastructure is old and outdated and much of it will have to be rebuilt. We are not much different than Texas. I guess that Mother Nature has to kill people before Florida realizes that it has a problem.