Floridians displaced by Hurricane Ian face decisions on how or if they will rebuild

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• Judy Woodruff:

  When Hurricane Ian hit the U.S., it was nearly a Category 5 storm and one of the strongest to ever make landfall in this country.

  In its aftermath, housing is an urgent problem, and hundreds of thousands of households have applied for federal assistance. But there are big challenges around rebuilding and questions about the wisdom of doing so along parts of the coast.

  William Brangham has our report from Fort Myers Beach, Florida.

• William Brangham:

  One month after Hurricane Ian ripped through Southwest Florida, communities here face wildly different realities.

  Some streets and homes in Lee County appear mostly untouched. Others are unrecognizable, mangled roadways, entire blocks filled with debris, homes ripped to pieces inside and out. The terrifying hours of Ian's landfall are still fresh on the minds of many, like Adela Garay and her son, Cristian.

  So, you jump out of the window, and you're in the water. You're swimming.

• Adela Garay, Harlem Heights, Resident:

  Yes.

• Cristian Jahuey, Harlem Heights Resident:

  Yes.

• William Brangham:

  Who live in the hard-hit, low-income, mostly Hispanic area of Harlem Heights, which is outside Fort Myers.

  Their family initially tried to ride out the storm, but the water inside began to rise, first to their ankles, then their knees, then up to their waists.

• Cristian Jahuey:

  We started to swim back all the way to the park in the backyard right there.

• William Brangham:

  You were swimming across your own yard?

• Cristian Jahuey:

  Yes.

• William Brangham:

  They spent the night shivering in a small building in the park across the street. In the morning, when they came home, everything was ruined.

  All of your belongings are gone.

• Adela Garay:

  Yes, I don't have nothing, don't have — I don't no have house. I don't no have car.

• William Brangham:

  They don't have insurance either. The restaurant where Adela's husband worked for decades was destroyed by Ian. The family is staying with some friends for now, five to a bedroom, and another friend is helping with home repairs.

  But as for what comes next?

• Adela Garay:

  I don't know. Maybe sleeping in the park, or I don't know.

• William Brangham:

  I'm really sorry.

• Adela Garay:

  No good. I'm sorry. This is very problem for my house. I don't know ready my house. I don't know.

• William Brangham:

  Ian destroyed thousands of homes across the state, exacerbating what advocates say was an already dire housing crisis.

  Daniel Cruz is with Florida Rural Legal Services.

• Daniel Cruz, Florida Rural Legal Services:

  There's no affordable housing available. And when we say affordable housing, we're not talking about just helping individuals that need subsidized housing or public housing. I'm talking about affordable housing for the typical working-class individual.

  What would have been years back difficult situation is becoming a catastrophe.

• William Brangham:

  In Florida, the official death toll from Hurricane Ian stands that well over 100, the state's deadliest storm in almost a century. Hundreds of people remain in shelters, and thousands are still without power.

  Total damage estimates are in the tens of billions of dollars. On Fort Myers Beach, which is near ground zero of the storm, the calm waters of the Gulf stand in stark contrast to the apocalyptic scenes on shore.

  This island community of about 6,000 suffered a devastating blow from Ian. At least 14 of the people who died in the storm were on Fort Myers Beach. Even the larger modern structures took a punch.

  Oh, my gosh.

• Bill Veach, Fort Myers Beach Councilmember:

  So, the kitchen was here.

• William Brangham:

  But many smaller, older homes were pulverized.

  So, your house stood here and here.

• Bill Veach:

  Right.

• William Brangham:

  And where is it now?

• Bill Veach:

  I found a little bit, one section of a wall in a friend's house most of the way down the block. Portions of it are two blocks down almost in the bay. I imagine some of it is actually in the water, because it was a complete wash-over.

• William Brangham:

  Wait. So the water was this high.

• Bill Veach:

  Over our head by a few feet.

• William Brangham:

  Oh, my gosh.

• Bill Veach:

  Even over your head.

• William Brangham:

  Bill Veach lost almost his entire 90-year-old house to Ian. He and his wife have lived here for more than a decade. And two years ago, he was elected to the town council.

• Bill Veach:

  A lot of people are very upset. They think things should be happening much faster than they are. Personally being involved in it, I am really amazed at how fast things are working. But I think that now is a very difficult time for people emotionally, because this is where people are finally trying to come to the realization of what's next.

  Do they rebuild? Do they have to move away?

• William Brangham:

  Much further inland in Lee County, while the destruction isn't quite as severe, residents are still struggling with an uncertain future.

• Charles Mattson, Fort Myers Resident:

  What's my next step here? I'm kind of on pins and needles as to what I need to do next.

• William Brangham:

  Eighty-four-year-old Charles Mattson lives in a North Fort Myers mobile home village, and like a lot of Floridians, he's made countless phone calls to his insurance company, but still hasn't had an adjuster visit.

  Boy, it looks like the whole skin of your house came off.

• Charles Mattson:

  Yes.

• William Brangham:

  The surface of his roof was shorn off by Ian's winds. He spent two nights in a shelter, but is now back at home.

• Charles Mattson:

  Right now, I don't know what the costs are going to be. And that is frustrating. I would just like to get started, so I could maybe contact some contractors them to start getting repairs made. I don't want to have a blue roof forever.

• William Brangham:

  There's the physical loss, but Charles lost something far more dear right before Ian made landfall.

• Charles Mattson:

  About three — three or four days before the hurricane, my wife passed away. I mean, she was sick for quite a while. I basically was taking care of her for about 15 months. She was in and out of the hospital, so it was not a good time.

• William Brangham:

  Because of the storm, Charles spent more than a week not knowing what happened to his wife's remains.

• Cathi McWhirter, Volunteer, Community Cooperative:

  Are you doing OK? I see that got a tarp on you finally.

• William Brangham:

  Is visited a few times a week by Cathi McWhirter, a Meals on Wheels volunteer for the Fort Myers nonprofit Community Cooperative.

  Cathi says Charles is but one of many Floridians whose lives were shaken, damaged or lost by the violence of the storm.

• Cathi McWhirter:

  How's it going today?

• Speaker:

  Hanging in there.

• Cathi McWhirter:

  Hanging in there?

• William Brangham:

  People who are now left trying to pick up the pieces.

• Cathi McWhirter:

  Lee County's lost all these people. But all those people are lives and families and co-workers and friends. And it's sad, but we will get through this. And there's a lot of people here to help, but it's not going to be a one-and-done, because I have never seen anything like this in my life ever.

• William Brangham:

  Judy, the official death toll from Hurricane Ian sits at 118 lives lost. But many people here believe that, through what are known as indirect deaths, that that number will go much higher.

  Indirect deaths are people who died subsequent to the storm, like when the power was out and their oxygen monitor went down or someone has a heart attack when they're clearing up debris. This has been increasingly looked at after recent disasters. And people think that, once that number is truly known, that the death toll here could go easily into the thousands.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Well, just so hard to even think about that.

  So, William, we saw in your piece that elderly man struggling with his insurance company. That has to be an enormous headache for so many homeowners there.

• William Brangham:

  It is a huge problem.

  And even though there is an army of insurance adjusters across the state, the demand is still so high that people are frustrated, like we saw from that gentleman. The bigger issue here is the issue of cost.

  Insurance rates in Florida are as expensive as they are anywhere in the country. And that's not just because of the storms that keep coming through here. It's also, according to the industry, because of fraud and of abuse in the system. The issue with insurance, though, is also, there's a larger, more existential question here, which is, how do you insure people when you never know when the next storm is going to come?

  Climate change is going to keep coming. Sea levels are going to keep going up. How do you equitably insure people in places that are this vulnerable? I mean, the private insurance industry has looked at this market and said, thanks, but no thanks.

  That leaves largely the government. That's either the federal government or, here in Florida, the state government running their own insurance programs. But those two programs are either in serious financial jeopardy or are heading for a financial cliff. And so it's just a very, very thorny public policy issue here.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And, William, it raises another question, which is, given the price hikes that you have just described, given the inevitability of big storms in the future, is anybody there talking about not staying, about leaving Florida?

• William Brangham:

  You know, Judy, we have asked everyone we have talked to that question, and, to a person — doesn't matter if they lost a few shingles on their house or their entire house — nobody is leaving.

  I mean, people who love Florida love Florida, and that's what's keeping them around here. Again, the bigger question is, does it make sense for the government to be encouraging people and signaling to people that it's OK to stay here?

  I mean, every time these roads are cleaned, and new power lines get strung up and new sewer systems are put in, that is the government saying, this is OK to live here, rebuild.

  And it's just a question, as climate change intensifies, and there is this potential steady parade of monster storms coming from the Gulf right over there, how do you allow that process to go forward? And I asked the local councilman who lives here. And his argument was that better building codes is the solution.

  And, certainly, there are houses here that took a direct hit, and they survived, businesses and houses. They made it through the storm. The problem is, is that to build your house up high and to build it like a fortress costs a lot of money. And the problem then is that the wealthy can afford to do that and can come here and build or stay here and build, whereas the poorer residents of this community cannot.

  And so that kind of progress fundamentally changes a community. And many researchers who study this whole process of how we build or not build in vulnerable areas say that this process, which is seemingly favoring wealthy people, is not a smart way to go about it, that we have to find a better way of figuring out how and where we allow people to live in vulnerable places.

  But Ian will contribute to that debate, but it's by no means going to be a settled issue.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Yes, a lot of tough decisions to be made in the months and the years to come.

  William Brangham reporting from Florida.

  Thank you, William.

• William Brangham:

  Thanks, Judy.