I would say that we have it off better than a lot of people. We have friends that have not been evacuated from Sanibel and won’t be until Tuesday. Most on Sanibel have lost everything. They will probably be coming here because a roof over their head is better than no roof at all. I really understand the suffering that many have experienced at the expense of these terrible storms. Mother Nature is being cooperative for us that have lived through this. No rain for the next week for now. That is good because they are going to start tarping the roofs tomorrow. When you look at the devastation there are areas here that will never be the same. When the rest of the world has moved on to the next crisis we are still going to be in the middle of this one. Our problems are not going to go away anytime soon.

Tourism is big in Southwestern Florida and this is the second blow in just the last three years. First we had Covid and the closing of the beaches in Sanibel and Lee Country. There were many businesses that didn’t make it. Tourism came back with a vengeance when the all clear was given and many businesses were busier than normal. It was a good Winter Season and a good Summer Season. Now along comes Ian. Ft. Myers Beach is gone pretty much. Sanibel and Captiva will be completely closed for the foreseeable future because they won’t even be able to get equipment out there until the Causeway is repaired. Without Air Conditioning can you imagine what the mold problems will be even with the properties that did survive? Matlachi is basically gone and the bridge to Pine Island is down so all the properties that did survive will be in the same boat as the ones on Sanibel and Captiva.  It will take quite some time until we know the extent of all of the damage.

Now over the last less than 20 years we have had 3 major Hurricanes hit the Lee Country area. We had Charlie, I think it was 2005.We had Irma in 2017. Now we have Ian 2022. With Charlie and now with Ian Sanibel and Captiva were just decimated.  The question is should Sanibel and Captiva recover, should we rebuild? We keep on pouring money into places that will be destroyed again in the near future. My wife and I love Sanibel and Captiva. Being just ten minutes away from the now broken causeway we were on the Island three to four times a week. I know people are upset that their vacation area is destroyed but it was part of our life. We have friends that live on the Island that are losing everything. But as I have said in other postings, one of my definitions of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Maybe we should start thinking about giving some of these areas back to Mother Nature before Mother Nature just gets pissed enough and just takes them.

The time to start seriously talking about climate change is not tomorrow, it is now. In fact, that conversation should have happened a long time ago. We have known about climate change most of my life but too many have been denying it for too long and some are still denying it. In Florida when Scott was Governor you couldn’t even mention the words Climate Change. Under DeSantis, in one of his first budgets he did put in some money to study the rising water problem so at least that is something. You don’t want to piss off the rich donors and lose their donations.  But to me that is a waste of a lot of money. Yes you can fortify shorelines but you can’t build a huge dike around the whole state. My grandchildren will not be able to enjoy the Florida that I have known.  The seas are going to continue to rise, the storms are just going to get stronger and the storm surges are going to get higher. Climate Change is real and the price tag will be more than just money. It will be in people lives.

They say that people should not take political advantage of a crisis like this. I will tell you that every time I watch a news conference it is like one political ad for DeSantis after another. Remember those Covid news conferences that Trump gave where everyone thanks Trump for the wonderful job that Trump was doing as more than a million people were dying and we had the highest death toll in the world? Well, these are just like those. Everyone is thanking DeSantis while people’s lives have been destroyed. This is not DeSantis’s fault but he is the Governor and I am not going to thank him for doing the job that he was elected to do. I saw on the news that he was passing out free food in Naples. Hey, that is great but why is he not in Harlem Heights in Fort Myers were the eye wall spent hours over, where people have literally lost everything. You and I know the answer to that. People in Naples donate money to him and the people in Harlem Heights have no money. Handing out food in Harlem Heights would be true leadership but how often in this country do we see true leadership? Nobody mentions FEMA or the Federal Government or even where the money is coming from. You know for sure it is not coming from the State with the low taxes because they don’t have the money. Do not tell me about taking political advantage of the storm. Every elected official is trying to take political advantage of the storm and no one more than DeSantis. So yes, politics is being played while people are suffering and they are being played by DeSantis.