A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to hear a panel of government officials review their experiences and lessons learned from Hurricane Ian.
Brian Hamman, District 4 Lee County Commissioner, likened his experience post-Ian to a disaster movie.
"Has anyone ever seen the movie Apollo 13? Do you remember the moment after the explosion, there's the NASA director in there, and they're like ‘This system's broken, this system's broken, this system’s down,’ and he finally just says, ‘What's good on the ship?’ That's the moment we had in the Emergency Operations Center. At that point, we had to figure out -- what do we have to work with?"
Colonel James Booth of the Army Corps of Engineers observed how regional organizations pulled together.
"It's talked about a lot in emergency management communities that you need to make a friend before you need a friend. You're much more apt to jump on the phone and talk to somebody and get things done quick, if you've had conversations, you know each other and I think that played out very, very well between...all the organizations involved in the response."
Fort Myers Beach Mayor Dan Allers shared his wishes for the next time this type of event occurs. "If I had a magic wand, if there was a way to, to ease everybody's anxiety...to allow them to know that as soon as it's over, with the help of the federal government and the Army, we're gonna get you back on that island. We're gonna get you back to your home."
Sanibel City Manager Dana Souza described what he’d like to see happen.
"I would say that all insurance companies would live up to the policy. We pay and we pay and when we hear them they say, 'Is it flood? Is it wind? Is it something else? Did you have damage before the storm?' Really? All the elements of God just crashed down on our community and you want to tell us that this is not an affected storm? It's a real burden. We still have people who are fighting with that."
Jennifer Carpenter, South Florida District Director for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, gave her state level perspective.
"We're getting really good at hurricanes because we've had so many of them. And so I think at the state level I've seen this very big improvement in how we respond. One of the things that I walked away with from this recovery, which is still ongoing, is a feeling that we can do anything if we put our mind to it...And so I think it was the causeway opening moment for all of us, right? Anything is possible. And so I think we need to take that feeling and put it into preparing. And we are gonna need to be more resilient if we're going to weather these storms in our coastal communities."
Allers provided some happy insight on how Fort Myers Beach, and the region, are coming back post-Ian.
"If you see where we're at now, versus where we were 15 months ago when nobody thought Sanibel, Fort Myers Beach or parts of Lee County, were going to be back. Not only are we back, but we're thriving, and we're going to continue to thrive. And we're going to continue to prepare. We're going to continue to learn from our mistakes. We're going to continue to educate ourselves, hopefully educate other municipalities. God forbid they have to go through the same things that we had to go through — to be able to understand what's going to come, what we've learned now, what we can pass on to the next generation, to the next people that are coming after us — to be even more prepared."
So it sounds like our government officials are focused on building regional resiliency for the next time we’re in the same situation.
Karen Moore is a contributing partner for WGCU and the publisher of SWFL Business Today.
