The town of Fort Myers Beach on Florida’s southwest coast was flattened by Hurricane Ian, a local politician said Thursday.
“I’ve covered about two-thirds of the island and I’d say 90 percent of the island is pretty much gone,” Fort Myers Beach Councilman Dan Allers told CNN’s Don Lemon. “Unless you have a high-rise condo or a new concrete house built to the same standards today, your home is pretty much gone.”
The city, with a population of approximately 5,600 people, is on the island of Estero in the Gulf of Mexico.
Many people struggled to get to higher ground amid the storm surge, Allers said.
“I’ve heard stories of people walking into freezers and floating the freezers into another house…and being rescued by taller houses,” Allers said.
Instead of where the houses used to be, there is only rubble, the council member said.
“Just about every house on the beach is gone,” Allers said. “Some of the houses on the side streets have completely disappeared, and there is nothing but a hole with water,” he said.
Allers, who evacuated to higher ground during the storm, later found his own home had been lost.
“Everything inside was gone,” he said, although the structure survived. “Maybe we could rebuild,” he added.