I am writing this on a Sunday morning. It is a beautiful January morning in southwest Florida and my wife and I are expecting company today from the chilly Midwest. The beaches are starting to open but we probably won’t be going to them anytime soon. It is by the beach that most of the destruction is. Cleanup is slow and it will take time. Much more time is needed before they can start to rebuild because the cleanup has to come first and there is still a lot of that to do. We took our boat out for the first time since the hurricane Ian and the Intracoastal Waterway looked pretty clear. You could still see a lot of debris in the shallows so we really had to pay close attention where we went. We looked over toward St. James City and there was a ketch that a person used to be living on was washed up into the mangroves. We stuck our nose into Tarpon Bay on Sanibel and most of the houses are still standing but there is lots work to be done. There is still a tremendous amount of reminders on how people’s lives have been turned upside down where ever you look.

The bridge to Sanibel is now open but to be honest with you there is not a whole lot to do out there. Almost all the shops are gone or closed. I think that most of the resorts will be closed for the entire 2023 season. There are only a handful of restaurants open with some like George and Wendy’s and the Fish House we are hearing will not be reopening. The Castaway Cottages up at Blind Pass are being torn down. Blind Pass got hit really hard and I probably will never look the same. I heard the Sanibel Beaches are going to reopen soon but as I said there isn’t that much to do and I wonder if the beach houses survived. I know that the historic buildings at the Light House are gone. My favorite place to go sit and watch the sun go down was the Sanibel Causeway and I wonder if I will ever be able to do that again. The Causeway is open but it is a mess and I have read that it may take a year before they decide what they are going to actually do with it.

Old Florida is going away and it probably won’t be coming back. People and groups with money will come in and rebuild but they are going to have to build homes and businesses that are going to be able to withstand a Category Five hurricane. In just under 20 years three hurricanes have hit the area, two Category 4s and one Category 5 so you know that it will happen again. We can complain all we want about the new building codes but let’s be honest; if you are going to build here it must be able to withstand the elements that will be coming in the future. The hurricanes will keep on coming. Climate change? Many in Florida still don’t believe in Climate Change. I am not one of them. To me it is simple physics. For every action there is a reaction. The action is burning fossil fuel and sending the pollution into the atmosphere. The reaction is climate change.

Doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results is nuts. We just can’t afford to be rebuilding every few years. The price of insurance will force many to move because they can’t afford to live here anymore. I have no idea what the people are going to do that had no insurance and lost everything.  Low income housing is pretty nonexistent in Southwestern Florida. Is it the insurance’s fault? They are going broke insuring property that has to constantly rebuild. Our insurance premiums are skyrocketing. Is it the States fault? Maybe because they keep on letting vulnerable areas such as these keep on rebuilding. It is the beauty that draws everyone but with that beauty comes danger. Some of this property is the most expensive properties in the State and brings in money and powerful people   into the State of Florida. That doesn’t make it right it just makes it reality.

Businesses that have trouble the Government may step in and bail them out. When a disaster like Ian happens FEMA is there to help with the cleanup. The Federal government has been here but they can only do so much. They can’t change the weather.