Gulf Coast Life

Everglades City Six Weeks After Irma

By Rachel Iacovone,

Published October 23, 2017 at 1:25 PM EDT

Judy Barton, a 49-year resident of Everglades City, stands in front of a pile of debris she hauled by herself. She's a widow and lives alone, but she had to take a break from the labor because her toe got a bacterial infection from Hurricane Irma cleanup.

It’s been a month and a half since Everglades City bore the brunt of Hurricane Irma’s storm surge, leaving most of the town’s homes uninhabitable, and there's still no sign of help coming from FEMA.

WGCU’s Jessica Meszaros has been following this story. She joins Gulf Coast Live with voices she captured from residents still waiting for a place to stay and the mayor who’s been advocating on their behalf.

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Rachel Iacovone

Rachel Iacovone is a reporter and associate producer of Gulf Coast Live for WGCU News. Rachel came to WGCU as an intern in 2016, during the presidential race. She went on to cover Florida Gulf Coast University students at President Donald Trump's inauguration on Capitol Hill and Southwest Floridians in attendance at the following day's Women's March on Washington.Rachel was first contacted by WGCU when she was managing editor of FGCU's student-run media group, Eagle News. She helped take Eagle News from a weekly newspaper to a daily online publication with TV and radio branches within two years, winning the 2016 Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Award for Best Use of Multimedia in a cross-platform series she led for National Coming Out Day. She also won the Mark of Excellence Award for Feature Writing for her five-month coverage of an FGCU student's transition from male to female.As a WGCU reporter, she produced the first radio story in WGCU's Curious Gulf Coast project, which answered the question: Does SWFL Have More Cases of Pediatric Cancer?Rachel graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University with a bachelor's degree in journalism.

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Julie Glenn

(1971 - 2022)

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Jessica Meszaros

Jessica Meszaros is a reporter and host of Morning Edition at WUSF Public Media, and former reporter and host of All Things Considered for WGCU News.

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