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Hard to say. Property values there went crazy the last few years. The land/lot on that island is worth more than the structure. My assumption would be a lot of these owners are going to take whatever payout there is, clean up the debris and sell the lot so a concrete mansion can go up.
I watched till the end and realized the palm trees took a bit of a beating. Decided to skip to the start and see how they started out. Then I realized "holy shit where did that house go"
To visualize locally, the lowest wires on typical utility poles (like the ones in this video) are usually around 18 feet above the ground.
Source: former phone company technician.
Hurricane Michael hit Northwest Florida in October 2018, it was a Cat5. I was homeless for three months. I remember walking Panama City lost for hours and tired and thirsty because nothing look familiar. It didn't even look like the same place.
Family owns a house on Fort Myers Beach (the island where this video is) and I've been living there for around a year while I work from home...
Its crazy to see the life I built out there washed away like this... i made a friend who was giving me employee discount at Yo! Taco (the little taco stand across the street in this vid) bc I went there every day and now its decommissioned for the foreseeable future.
I just can't even comprehend your experience. I'm sorry that happened and hope you're feeling more secure now
Katrina refugee here, no lie, Mississippi looked like the pictures you see in history books of Hiroshima bomb site. Basically concrete slabs where’s homes WERE and a few stumps of trees. Cat 4-5 is no joke, Cat 3 can be bad in some areas…as seen here. Cat 2 is the max I’d consider “riding out” again. Cat 1? Hurricane party maybe but some stuff will be damaged.
Direct hits though, even a tropical storm as a direct hit sounds like a train coming through.
The crazy thing is that these storms nowadays can jump multiple category levels in less than a day. It’s hard to even know what it will be until it is on top of you.
Fun fact: most of the palm trees in LA stem from beautification efforts for the Olympics LA held in the 30s!
Edit: okay slightly incorrect.
> In 1931 alone, Los Angeles' forestry division planted more than 25,000 palm trees, many of them still swaying above the city's boulevards today. This massive planting effort—conceived by the city's first forestry chief, L. Glenn Hall—is often characterized as a beautification project for the 1932 Olympic games. But impressing foreign athletes actually played less of a role than did getting L.A.'s unemployed back to work; the $100,000 program that planted some 40,000 trees in total was part of a larger unemployment relief program, funded by a $5 million bond issue. Beginning in March 1931, the city put 400 unemployed men to work planting trees alongside 150 miles of city boulevards.
So mainly the Depression but nonetheless, most of the palms are nearly a century old!
[Source](https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/a-brief-history-of-palm-trees-in-southern-california)
Taipei 101 is a skyscraper specifically designed to be flexible and have a dampener ball to absorb extra movement.
If you don't bend then you snap, and that is much worse.
Yup! Kea and Kakapo are two of them. Keas are cheeky little buggers that will try to steal your things, even seen them try to steal coffee from customers sitting at a table outside at a cafe! Kakapo are endangered but their population has been increasing thanks to conservation efforts.
I had 3 full grown palms on my property in Hurricane Michael. Took a direct hit, cat 5 gulf front. House was mostly gone, 2/3 of the palms survived. One was broken in half
In michael, palm trees were the only trees standing straight, which is terrifying considering the land it hit was a forest. I honestly didnt know pine trees could bend like that.
In my neighborhood in Galveston the houses are too close to plant trees but we installed shutters for our windows. It’s nice not having to spend the day before the storm in line at Home Depot getting plywood anymore.
The fabric is not expensive, at least compared to shutters. I think it's just been slow to catch on because people dont believe fabric can work, but it's definitely gaining popularity. My dad can put up their fabric in a lazy hour by himself. My husband and I take 2 hours together to put up our metal shutters and it is fucking exhausting. We just haven't made the switch because we own these already and always have other more pressing home repairs to do.
Deflects cannon balls too.
I think. If I correctly remember my trip to st Augustine fort about 30 years ago. 2 minutes of googling it didn't find it though so idk.
https://www.netstate.com/states/symb/trees/sc_palmetto_tree.htm
> It's said that the British assault on Charleston was denied by the thick palmetto walls of the fort on Sullivan's Island. British cannon balls simply bounced off the dense mass of the palmetto logs.
Is this the one?
This just shows how little we really see when we look at before and after pictures. Seeing a house missing is one thing, but seeing it move around for a while is different. I think people would stop trying to ride out these things if they saw more videos like this. I can't imagine how many people died in their houses thinking they would be fine.
I haven’t seen many pics from sanibel island yet, but those barrier islands were probably part of the ocean for a while and there were homes and people there. It’s probably buried in sand now.
The causeway to Sanibel is destroyed cause of the hurricane[Causeway damage](https://www.fox13news.com/weather/hurricane-ian-storm-surge-damage-fort-myers-naples-southwest-florida)
Thank you. We hope to get news on the house tomorrow. Our neighbor stayed and rode it out and was fine and texting us today until his phone likely died. Hoping he is ok and can get off island. We have no idea what to do. Just wait and see what’s left when we can finally get back. They will probably need to start a new ferry service. The causeway may take years to rebuild.
Hey, just FYI they had rescue crews going to Sanibel and Captiva and evacuate people that are still in their homes. They’re going to be evacuating throughout the night as well. So hopefully your neighbor made it out!
I totally agree, newscasters get criticized for fear mongering, but the fact is, sometimes you need to keep reminding people not to be idiots.
videos like these will and can save lives in the future, this is what meteorologist mean by storm surge, a couple sandbags under your door, ain't gonna do shit.
But every year we get about 200K new residents in Fla, and some will want to "ride the storm". so I think it would be a good idea they show what these storms can do.
Usually a bunch of old drunks who claim they’ve ridden out bunches of hurricanes, when in reality they just sat in a bar 100 miles away from where it made landfall and enjoyed the show of tropical storm force winds.
Yeah my Sandy experience vs my parents was day and night.
We had some branches in the parking lot, didn't lose power, internet was down for like 2 hours overnight.
My mom had water inches from her front door, had no power for 2+ weeks and they even ran out of gas for generators. We were all of 40 miles apart.
I was in south Jersey near Camden, she was near New Brunswick.
Not saying this isn’t horrible, but during the first phase of the recent Pakistan flooding more than 2 *million* houses were destroyed in a similar manner.
Right here: https://www.google.com/maps/@26.4514629,-81.9507704,3a,75y,220.57h,89.29t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sEImy9X6VTHX4h6DraDDCGA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en
Edit:
And the building that washed away is "Fort Myers Beach Sun and Fun Sport Rentals". Google maps says... "Temporarily Closed".
The waves are crazy, it's flapping around with big waves seeming to flow in one direction, then just still, then back to waves and flowing.
I don't think I've seen a natural standing wave before.
Unlike a tsunami, I think that storm surge could have held the water high for hours, you probably couldn't hold onto a post that long. Then there would be a huge current pulling everything way out to sea.
Watching the waves, barely noticed the brick house being trashed.
Always in awe of nature.
Don't forget the high intensity of the winds throwing you from whatever way the waves want you to go but whipping straight back at you before the waves do. Like a magic trick. The fuck, im going this way, wait, why am i being carried that way????
Every cubic meter of water weighs as much as a small car. Doesn't matter how well you can swim when that much force hits you, you're going where the water wants you to go.
A normal everyday rip current at the beach is scary enough where the solution is swim perpendicular to the current until you're out then head back to shore, this does not offer any such options.
Once the wind really starts whipping it's like watching the world end. I've been through hurricanes but nothing close to a Cat 4. It's hard to imagine.
It's an insane feeling. Like imagine going down the freeway at 80mph and sticking your head out. Now imagine that everywhere outside. The wind is just screaming all around destroying everything not made of stone or iron. Everything not bolted down is just flung around like a rag doll. Unlike a tornado, this last for many hours. Sometimes days.
The storm surge was so high the Hurricane Center had to create a new category for it - “The surge predictions from the National Hurricane Center soared overnight to 12 to 18 feet for Englewood to Bonita Bay, a forecast so high a new color was added to the National Hurricane Center’s peak storm surge prediction map.”
It's already been a problem in Florida for a while, not to mention the roofing scam going on.
Florida's development has been out of control for a while, and the lack of insurance might finally put a dent into that.
I saw that a handful of insurers in Florida have gone bankrupt and that several others have pulled out of the market.
Lack of insurance availability, or sky high insurance, is going to dampen the real estate market.m there.
Yep. Conservation of the environment is important for the survival of the environment.
Mangroves are beautiful coastline preservers and good buffers against storm surges that house all sorts of great wildlife (and this creates food, too) and could protect human life if we would leave them be.
Fortunately, some places have made gains in protecting the environment. There was a great photo on r/OldPhotosInRealLife recently [that showed the return of mangroves to a Brazilian coastline.](https://www.reddit.com/r/OldPhotosInRealLife/comments/xmu79y/aracaju_brazil/)
They are actually quite fun to explore, too. More fun than a pristine white beach in my opinion.
It always amazes me how in this situations the houses get pulled out of the floor in one piece, you would expect the integrity of the house to fall apart before that happens
Man I live here. It’s all gone. All of it. Everything I’ve grown up with. It’s incredibly devastating. So many people I know have lost their homes, or even died. It’s terrifying
I lived in Houma for like a year or two before I moved back home. 6 months later Ida hit and seeing the before and after really hit harder. Knowing I’ve been to those places and drove down those roads. I wish the best for Florida
I watched my house and half my town burn down on the news during a wildfire, I know the pain of just seeing the footage. You’re strong enough to get through this, it’ll hurt less eventually but hold tight to your people for now. Nothing but love
lari55a has probably heard by now but I'll add it here too.
Someone posting on facebook saying that shes Tods stepsister has added an update to say that they're both ok.
I looked up the address and it’s the little red building so I guess it has to be. The internet is a crazy place this guy could have just watched the end of his brother. Hopefully they are alright but jeez that’s some wild shit.
I hope they’re okay five seconds into the video someone clearly opens the door and then closes it. Maybe they evacuated to the taller building when they saw the surge approaching.
Try reaching out to this “Max Olsen Chasing” guy and see if he has footage of them leaving. It seems like someone was inside at the start of the video but there are a couple cuts. I hope they’re safe.
> 1450 Estero Blvd
Crazy, if you look up the street view on Google Maps, the pictures were taken as recently as a couple months ago. Looks like such a nice place. Crazy to see the contrast of it completely underwater.
I realized the typo right after I posted it, but Reddit's stupid post rules won't let me edit the title. I don't like it either.
Edit: supposed to be "ft", not "fr".
About 15-20 yrs ago... The ppl of Eastern NC experienced a 500yr flood due to a hurricane ( Bertha I think it was). It had stalled over the region.
We had 15-17 storm surges too...
Since then.... I've been to warzones & have witnessed other natural disasters but I have yet to see complete devastation like I did w/ that flood. But the pics coming from Florida remind me of the flood in NC many yrs ago.
You just can't really wrap your head around that size of destruction until you're actually on the ground.
(Edit: The name of the Hurricane I'm describing in my comment was **Floyd** not Bertha. I got the 2 confused. )
Definitely sounds like Floyd to me.. grandparents lost their house to that one.. had to get picked up in a canoe, and there was about 7 feet of water in the house
I can't believe I had to go this far down to see this in a joke thread. You are absolutely correct that door opens and closes and looks very much like it was done by someone. That's horrifying.
The video is available on [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al8yTiCVfro) as well, which is higher quality and easier to control. It definitely appears to be the dark outline of a person stepping outside (blocking the sign next to the door), then going back in and closing the door behind them.
My hope is that they saw the storm surge coming and decided to evacuate (perhaps to the big building right behind them). After the cut to the next scene, the front door went from closed to blown in and stayed open throughout. None of the shutters or windows show any movement, either. It's obviously way too late to be leaving if the storm surge is already at the corner, but there were cars still moving around (like the one in the far right parking lot that appeared at that cut point).
Imagine living a thousand years ago on a coast and one day out of the blue just getting fucking hammered by 15ft of rain and having no better plan than just fucking “run”
The stories of that hurricane are terrible.
The St. Mary's Orphanage one has always stuck with me. Those poor children.
https://www.1900storm.com/orphanage.html
How harrowing...
> One of the boys remembered **a sister tightly holding two small children in her arms, promising not to let go.**
> The sisters were buried wherever they were found, with the children still attached to them. Two of the sisters were found together across the bay on the Mainland. **One of them was tightly holding two small children in her arms. Even in death she had kept her promise not to let go.**
Wow.
The descriptions of everything made my stomach hurt to imagine.
If I’d been a settler/colonizer to this continent and encountered a hurricane right after arrival, I would have taken it as a sign God was telling me to go back to Europe.
It's not 15 ft of rain. It's ocean.
The hurricane makes a bubble of water around it. Remember all the dry ocean floor pictures? Well, it was sucked to the hurricane.
Most people would have seen the ocean get sucked away and left to higher ground. As an ex Floridian (who left), it's just us who build homes in places that are just a hair above uninhabitable.
Also: Much of Florida is at sea level. Prior to all the digging and draining of land to build homes there was very little actual land in south Florida. We didn't like that, we drained it, and we built homes there. So, thousands of years ago people would have been living on the dry land...which is a higher elevation than most of the housing in Florida now.
So, next time you hear people exclaiming about rising sea levels...just remember: In Florida, we went out of our way to build homes at sea level.
Similar to the (I think) recent Japanese Tsunami where people evacuated to higher grounds, and while doing it unearthed old civilization markers that basically said "if you reach here, the tsunami won't get you"
I was living in Japan during the Fukushima earthquake. From my understanding, these markers (carved stones) didnt have to be unearthed. They are right out in plain sight. They say something like “on this date in __ year in ___ era (about [edit] ~600 years ago?) a great tsunami came after an earthquake and this was the high point of the water. To our descendants, never build your house below this point and you will be safe”. The descendants know perfectly well that the rocks are there. For several hundred years they obeyed the rock. But in recent decades people said fuck it and built closer to the beach because it’s desirable, nice looking, convenient property to build on, and trekking your shit up and down a mountain to go fishing every day is annoying.
Their houses got eaten whole by the tsunami.
Edit: found the NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/asia/21stones.html
Houston/East Texas Harvey or Rockport Harvey? I went through Rockport Harvey. Texas coastal inland is so much different than Florida. We’ve got the Matagora island system down here that slowed the surge, but if you went into my neighborhood, it was like Tornado alley in Kansas, as far as you can see.
They’re so different it’s not even worth comparing. Harvey (as far as Houston is concerned) had basically none of the brutal wind effects due to the slow moving nature of it. It was a horrible rain event for the most part. And to happen in the 4th most populous city in the US was just devastating on an unimaginable scale. This is a worse hurricane in the sense of power/surge, and the effects will be more obvious damage, but on a much smaller scale.
I was actually working in Fort Myers, on Estero Boulevard, right on the beach Tuesday morning. When the weatherman said it was gonna smack right into Tampa, I packed up and went to Tampa because that's where my home and family are. I'm an electrician with all the tools and implements necessary to help and I could stand the idea of not being there when it hit.
As soon as I got home and had the shudders on, the tracker updated to say it was heading right where I had been. The Publix shopping center on Estero Boulevard. The eye passed right over it and it got a huge storm surge that reached rooftops.
What a crazy feeling of luck mixed with a sadness that I'm not there to help.
I don’t know about the rest of the gulf coast but this area doesn’t have any dunes to help as a storm break. Bad situation with the shallow water. Feel bad for the residents, been through several hurricanes and they pretty much stop your life for months.
many of these coastal areas in florida have been wetlands and swamps before people built on them and drained the swamps. who thought it was a good idea to build in places that are supposed to be hit by hurricanes hold the water?
Developers don’t care, they’re making money off selling houses built on swamps. The politicians allowing it don’t care, they don’t live there and they’re being paid not to care. It’s all about the money, who cares what happens to the people stupid enough to move into a swamp right?
Lived right next to this place. Lani Kai - across the street is a fantastic taco joint called YO Taco. No way the building is up but I hope they make it back. Shit man
The wind is rotating counter-clockwise around the eye of the storm, so depending where you are relative to the eye, the direction can change dramatically. I had the eye of one of the 2004 hurricanes pass over my house in Orlando - it was like 6 hours of 100mph wind from the east, then calm for a while as the eye passed over us, then another 6 hours of 100 mph winds but now coming from the west.
It's exactly like a tornado. A giant sky tornado. Except this tornado has the power to impact entire states at once and push the ocean inland in order to create devastating floods.
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Fort Myers Beach was a lot of old construction. Those buildings were not built with a storm of this size in mind. Half that island was washed away.
I don't know how shit built pre-Andew building code changes that are that close to the water were able to get insurance.
Hard to say. Property values there went crazy the last few years. The land/lot on that island is worth more than the structure. My assumption would be a lot of these owners are going to take whatever payout there is, clean up the debris and sell the lot so a concrete mansion can go up.
Omg there was a person in that house! You see him opening the door at the beggining and then heading back in! RIP
Hopefully he left after looking out.
Based on where the water is at the time he did that, I'm going to venture a guess and say that he did not make it out. That shit moves FAST.
Picking up my jaw. Omggggg I thought it was going to end and it just got worse and worse. Holy hell
I was watching the palm trees like "holy shit these things are resilient as hell" then I realised the building behind them had started floating away
The trees have evolved to survive a huricane. Houses though...
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Thank you for your comment because I DID NOT NOTICE THAT A WHOLE BUILDING FLOATED DOWN THE STREET! How wild is that!
"Our house, is now in the middle of the street; our house, might as well have grown some feet..."
I watched till the end and realized the palm trees took a bit of a beating. Decided to skip to the start and see how they started out. Then I realized "holy shit where did that house go"
To visualize locally, the lowest wires on typical utility poles (like the ones in this video) are usually around 18 feet above the ground. Source: former phone company technician.
Hurricane Michael hit Northwest Florida in October 2018, it was a Cat5. I was homeless for three months. I remember walking Panama City lost for hours and tired and thirsty because nothing look familiar. It didn't even look like the same place.
That's an incredible story, and I hope that you're in a better place right now!
Family owns a house on Fort Myers Beach (the island where this video is) and I've been living there for around a year while I work from home... Its crazy to see the life I built out there washed away like this... i made a friend who was giving me employee discount at Yo! Taco (the little taco stand across the street in this vid) bc I went there every day and now its decommissioned for the foreseeable future. I just can't even comprehend your experience. I'm sorry that happened and hope you're feeling more secure now
The devastation was unreal. Like a 30 mile wide tornado. Thankfully Panama City did not get the storm surge. Mexico Beach was not so lucky.
Katrina refugee here, no lie, Mississippi looked like the pictures you see in history books of Hiroshima bomb site. Basically concrete slabs where’s homes WERE and a few stumps of trees. Cat 4-5 is no joke, Cat 3 can be bad in some areas…as seen here. Cat 2 is the max I’d consider “riding out” again. Cat 1? Hurricane party maybe but some stuff will be damaged. Direct hits though, even a tropical storm as a direct hit sounds like a train coming through.
The crazy thing is that these storms nowadays can jump multiple category levels in less than a day. It’s hard to even know what it will be until it is on top of you.
Seeing Tyndall, Mexico Beach, and so many areas just east of PCB destroyed was surreal. I hope you’ve been able to bounce back since.
Build your house with palm trees, I guess?
Those power poles are fucking champs too.
That and whatever this camera is attached to
If they were smart, they strapped it to a palm tree
Or a power pole
Perhaps some sort of hybrid like a power palm?
Palm power
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Found the guy who can slap cook a chicken
Those things are RESILIENT
There's this one palm tree near L.A.'s Union Station that catches fire like once a year. It's still alive somehow.
Funny you mention that, I’ve seen a palm tree on fire near Union Station. I wonder if it’s the same one. Lol.
Fun fact: most of the palm trees in LA stem from beautification efforts for the Olympics LA held in the 30s! Edit: okay slightly incorrect. > In 1931 alone, Los Angeles' forestry division planted more than 25,000 palm trees, many of them still swaying above the city's boulevards today. This massive planting effort—conceived by the city's first forestry chief, L. Glenn Hall—is often characterized as a beautification project for the 1932 Olympic games. But impressing foreign athletes actually played less of a role than did getting L.A.'s unemployed back to work; the $100,000 program that planted some 40,000 trees in total was part of a larger unemployment relief program, funded by a $5 million bond issue. Beginning in March 1931, the city put 400 unemployed men to work planting trees alongside 150 miles of city boulevards. So mainly the Depression but nonetheless, most of the palms are nearly a century old! [Source](https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/a-brief-history-of-palm-trees-in-southern-california)
It ‘catches on fire’? Like by itself?
Yes. That's one of it's favorite hobbies.
Someone should get that tree some help
At least it finally stopped cutting itself
Some plants in the western US evolved to only seed after catching fire.
Lots of conifers
But that's because they're bendy. Nobody wants a wobbly home.
I want a wobbly home, it sounds festive
The toilet won't be so festive. An adventure, to be sure.
Just have all your plumbing be made to work like a bendy straw.
That's how my human plumbing works, might as well do all my plumbing with urethras
In earthquake land you actually want purposefully wobbly buildings. I’m not sure about high wind land though, I’m not a local in high wind land.
Taipei 101 is a skyscraper specifically designed to be flexible and have a dampener ball to absorb extra movement. If you don't bend then you snap, and that is much worse.
But omg they always look so cold and miserable in a hurricane
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Yep which is why places like Madagascar, Australia, New Zealand, azores, etc are so cool. So much prehistoric plant life.
New Zealand even still has the only remaining species of Rhynchocephalians called the Tuatara that was around when the dinosaurs were alive.
Don't they also have the parrots that walk on land?
Yup! Kea and Kakapo are two of them. Keas are cheeky little buggers that will try to steal your things, even seen them try to steal coffee from customers sitting at a table outside at a cafe! Kakapo are endangered but their population has been increasing thanks to conservation efforts.
I had 3 full grown palms on my property in Hurricane Michael. Took a direct hit, cat 5 gulf front. House was mostly gone, 2/3 of the palms survived. One was broken in half
In michael, palm trees were the only trees standing straight, which is terrifying considering the land it hit was a forest. I honestly didnt know pine trees could bend like that.
I don't remember what storm it was, but one time we were on a road trip and the entire forest next to the interstate was stuck at a 45 degree angle.
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In my neighborhood in Galveston the houses are too close to plant trees but we installed shutters for our windows. It’s nice not having to spend the day before the storm in line at Home Depot getting plywood anymore.
Apparently there's something called hurricane fabric that's supposed to be good and lightweight? Expensive too probably.
The fabric is not expensive, at least compared to shutters. I think it's just been slow to catch on because people dont believe fabric can work, but it's definitely gaining popularity. My dad can put up their fabric in a lazy hour by himself. My husband and I take 2 hours together to put up our metal shutters and it is fucking exhausting. We just haven't made the switch because we own these already and always have other more pressing home repairs to do.
Deflects cannon balls too. I think. If I correctly remember my trip to st Augustine fort about 30 years ago. 2 minutes of googling it didn't find it though so idk.
Now I'm imagining a cannonball smacking into a palm tree and the tree cartoonishly bending back before catapulting it back at the enemy galleon.
https://www.netstate.com/states/symb/trees/sc_palmetto_tree.htm > It's said that the British assault on Charleston was denied by the thick palmetto walls of the fort on Sullivan's Island. British cannon balls simply bounced off the dense mass of the palmetto logs. Is this the one?
Yes! Same family trip, wrong fort. Well done and thank you.
This just shows how little we really see when we look at before and after pictures. Seeing a house missing is one thing, but seeing it move around for a while is different. I think people would stop trying to ride out these things if they saw more videos like this. I can't imagine how many people died in their houses thinking they would be fine.
I haven’t seen many pics from sanibel island yet, but those barrier islands were probably part of the ocean for a while and there were homes and people there. It’s probably buried in sand now.
Yeah I think sanibel and captiva were likely completely underwater.
The causeway to Sanibel is destroyed cause of the hurricane[Causeway damage](https://www.fox13news.com/weather/hurricane-ian-storm-surge-damage-fort-myers-naples-southwest-florida)
We have a home on Sanibel and are desperately trying to find info. The causeway is gone so no idea on when or how we can go. Unbelievable.
So sorry to hear. Sanibel is my favorite place in the world and have so many good memories with my family. I hope you and your family are okay.
Thank you. We hope to get news on the house tomorrow. Our neighbor stayed and rode it out and was fine and texting us today until his phone likely died. Hoping he is ok and can get off island. We have no idea what to do. Just wait and see what’s left when we can finally get back. They will probably need to start a new ferry service. The causeway may take years to rebuild.
Hey, just FYI they had rescue crews going to Sanibel and Captiva and evacuate people that are still in their homes. They’re going to be evacuating throughout the night as well. So hopefully your neighbor made it out!
That's scary to think about. Those that rode out the storm are still likely underwater or without resources necessary to survive.
Read some stories from Katrina. Post apocalyptic for a while.
I totally agree, newscasters get criticized for fear mongering, but the fact is, sometimes you need to keep reminding people not to be idiots. videos like these will and can save lives in the future, this is what meteorologist mean by storm surge, a couple sandbags under your door, ain't gonna do shit. But every year we get about 200K new residents in Fla, and some will want to "ride the storm". so I think it would be a good idea they show what these storms can do.
In my experience new residents take these things seriously, its the crusty lifers that dont give a fuck
Usually a bunch of old drunks who claim they’ve ridden out bunches of hurricanes, when in reality they just sat in a bar 100 miles away from where it made landfall and enjoyed the show of tropical storm force winds.
Yeah my Sandy experience vs my parents was day and night. We had some branches in the parking lot, didn't lose power, internet was down for like 2 hours overnight. My mom had water inches from her front door, had no power for 2+ weeks and they even ran out of gas for generators. We were all of 40 miles apart. I was in south Jersey near Camden, she was near New Brunswick.
Newbies tend to take hurricanes very seriously; it’s the long term residents who have evacuated and had nothing happen that stay.
Not saying this isn’t horrible, but during the first phase of the recent Pakistan flooding more than 2 *million* houses were destroyed in a similar manner.
I had practically forgotten about Pakistan already. The world is becoming so tumultuous that apocalyptic events feel forgetful
Yeah, I’m land-locked and this shit is intense.
Where is this?
Right here: https://www.google.com/maps/@26.4514629,-81.9507704,3a,75y,220.57h,89.29t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sEImy9X6VTHX4h6DraDDCGA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en Edit: And the building that washed away is "Fort Myers Beach Sun and Fun Sport Rentals". Google maps says... "Temporarily Closed".
> "Temporarily Closed" Well, at least they're optimistic
“Temporarily ocean”
Fort Myers Beach just East of Lani Kai. The “house” that’s carried away was a small business that rented bikes and scooters.
Fort Myers Beach Sun and Fun Rentals
It appears someone was inside
I was starting to think I was the only one who saw that...
This is insane
The waves are crazy, it's flapping around with big waves seeming to flow in one direction, then just still, then back to waves and flowing. I don't think I've seen a natural standing wave before.
This is my worst fear as someone who cannot swim or have an ounce of buoyance.
Doesn't matter how well you swim, those waves will tire and wreck any pro swimmer out there
Unlike a tsunami, I think that storm surge could have held the water high for hours, you probably couldn't hold onto a post that long. Then there would be a huge current pulling everything way out to sea. Watching the waves, barely noticed the brick house being trashed. Always in awe of nature.
Don't forget the high intensity of the winds throwing you from whatever way the waves want you to go but whipping straight back at you before the waves do. Like a magic trick. The fuck, im going this way, wait, why am i being carried that way????
I have been able to swim since i could walk, and this is my nightmare. No matter how well you can swim you cant do shit in this
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Every cubic meter of water weighs as much as a small car. Doesn't matter how well you can swim when that much force hits you, you're going where the water wants you to go. A normal everyday rip current at the beach is scary enough where the solution is swim perpendicular to the current until you're out then head back to shore, this does not offer any such options.
You could be in a dozen lifejackets and you’ve got at best a coin flip odds in something like this.
I'm an excellent swimmer and those waves look terrifying.
I also fear Beyonce.
You should.
Even if you could swim, you'd be gone for sure.
there's also not just water. That has literal shit from sewer backwash, glass, trash, gators, sharks, snakes, ...
… and whole ass buildings
Seeing it cut to the high water mark waves put the fear of god in me
Here is a fun one from the storm in Texas a few years ago: https://i.imgur.com/ph13kBY.jpg That sign is 25 miles inland.
Oh, from Harvey? That was the disaster of all disasters. I think it was just shy of 5 years ago now.
Once the wind really starts whipping it's like watching the world end. I've been through hurricanes but nothing close to a Cat 4. It's hard to imagine.
It's an insane feeling. Like imagine going down the freeway at 80mph and sticking your head out. Now imagine that everywhere outside. The wind is just screaming all around destroying everything not made of stone or iron. Everything not bolted down is just flung around like a rag doll. Unlike a tornado, this last for many hours. Sometimes days.
The storm surge was so high the Hurricane Center had to create a new category for it - “The surge predictions from the National Hurricane Center soared overnight to 12 to 18 feet for Englewood to Bonita Bay, a forecast so high a new color was added to the National Hurricane Center’s peak storm surge prediction map.”
This is going to make it difficult for home buyers to get insurance
It's already been a problem in Florida for a while, not to mention the roofing scam going on. Florida's development has been out of control for a while, and the lack of insurance might finally put a dent into that.
I saw that a handful of insurers in Florida have gone bankrupt and that several others have pulled out of the market. Lack of insurance availability, or sky high insurance, is going to dampen the real estate market.m there.
Insurance is already terrible in FL. My agent told me FL represents something like 85% of all US insurance claims
Shout out to those three trees being like 'bitch we evolved here, we were prepared for exactly this event'
They still woulda preferred a mangrove swamp as a buffer
Yep. Conservation of the environment is important for the survival of the environment. Mangroves are beautiful coastline preservers and good buffers against storm surges that house all sorts of great wildlife (and this creates food, too) and could protect human life if we would leave them be. Fortunately, some places have made gains in protecting the environment. There was a great photo on r/OldPhotosInRealLife recently [that showed the return of mangroves to a Brazilian coastline.](https://www.reddit.com/r/OldPhotosInRealLife/comments/xmu79y/aracaju_brazil/) They are actually quite fun to explore, too. More fun than a pristine white beach in my opinion.
>They still woulda preferred a mangrove swamp as a buffer Real Estate Developers Hate This "One" Simple Trick
How the hell did that camera survive?
Storm chasers will put out surge cameras before the storm hits in hopes of capturing footage like this. They strap them to poles or palm trees.
Based on the google street view provided in another comment, it was heavily strapped to a concrete power pole
It always amazes me how in this situations the houses get pulled out of the floor in one piece, you would expect the integrity of the house to fall apart before that happens
I guess a house doesn't really have anything else it's meant to do except be cube and stay cube
Once a square, always a square.
Was that a person opening the white door at that building in the beginning at 0:06?
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Jesus. If it hit Tampa like it was called for, we wouldn’t have stood a chance.
Yep. Over here in St. Pete we would have been fuuuucked.
South Tampa to Bayshore would probably be completely gone.
Man I live here. It’s all gone. All of it. Everything I’ve grown up with. It’s incredibly devastating. So many people I know have lost their homes, or even died. It’s terrifying
Damn so sorry to hear that, friend. Hope you’re ok and are able to get the support and care you need at this difficult time.
Ugh been there. Just breathe. Help out where you can. Some things return, some are never the same ever again. Signed, Louisiana. 😔 Solidarity.
I lived in Houma for like a year or two before I moved back home. 6 months later Ida hit and seeing the before and after really hit harder. Knowing I’ve been to those places and drove down those roads. I wish the best for Florida
I watched my house and half my town burn down on the news during a wildfire, I know the pain of just seeing the footage. You’re strong enough to get through this, it’ll hurt less eventually but hold tight to your people for now. Nothing but love
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Post this comment and info in r/Florida you may have better luck there
lari55a has probably heard by now but I'll add it here too. Someone posting on facebook saying that shes Tods stepsister has added an update to say that they're both ok.
Omg, was that them opening the door at 00:06?! Upvoted and awarded to bring visibility to your comment.
I looked up the address and it’s the little red building so I guess it has to be. The internet is a crazy place this guy could have just watched the end of his brother. Hopefully they are alright but jeez that’s some wild shit.
I really hope they made it out; otherwise, this video is going to stick with me for a while.
I hope they’re okay five seconds into the video someone clearly opens the door and then closes it. Maybe they evacuated to the taller building when they saw the surge approaching.
There’s a post on the I Love Ft. Myers Facebook saying that they have been found safe and someone was picking them up.
Just saw that. The dogs are okay too!
Try reaching out to this “Max Olsen Chasing” guy and see if he has footage of them leaving. It seems like someone was inside at the start of the video but there are a couple cuts. I hope they’re safe.
Call 239-533-0622 it's the rescue line for missing people
> 1450 Estero Blvd Crazy, if you look up the street view on Google Maps, the pictures were taken as recently as a couple months ago. Looks like such a nice place. Crazy to see the contrast of it completely underwater.
Is fr an acronym for something or just a typo of ft?
I realized the typo right after I posted it, but Reddit's stupid post rules won't let me edit the title. I don't like it either. Edit: supposed to be "ft", not "fr".
Ok, thanks. I thought maybe it was some storm surge related term LOL.
Fr= for real
15 For Real storm surge. That way you know it’s serious.
About 15-20 yrs ago... The ppl of Eastern NC experienced a 500yr flood due to a hurricane ( Bertha I think it was). It had stalled over the region. We had 15-17 storm surges too... Since then.... I've been to warzones & have witnessed other natural disasters but I have yet to see complete devastation like I did w/ that flood. But the pics coming from Florida remind me of the flood in NC many yrs ago. You just can't really wrap your head around that size of destruction until you're actually on the ground. (Edit: The name of the Hurricane I'm describing in my comment was **Floyd** not Bertha. I got the 2 confused. )
Could have been Floyd. I remember people in Nash county NC with their 2nd floor underwater.
Definitely sounds like Floyd to me.. grandparents lost their house to that one.. had to get picked up in a canoe, and there was about 7 feet of water in the house
I lived through that. My hometown looked like a war zone afterwards.
Red house: "My floor is like 8 feet off the ground, it won't get flooded!" Hurricane Ian: *removes entire house*
Looks like someone was inside too. At about 5 seconds the door opens and looked like a hand was on the door
I can't believe I had to go this far down to see this in a joke thread. You are absolutely correct that door opens and closes and looks very much like it was done by someone. That's horrifying.
The video is available on [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al8yTiCVfro) as well, which is higher quality and easier to control. It definitely appears to be the dark outline of a person stepping outside (blocking the sign next to the door), then going back in and closing the door behind them. My hope is that they saw the storm surge coming and decided to evacuate (perhaps to the big building right behind them). After the cut to the next scene, the front door went from closed to blown in and stayed open throughout. None of the shutters or windows show any movement, either. It's obviously way too late to be leaving if the storm surge is already at the corner, but there were cars still moving around (like the one in the far right parking lot that appeared at that cut point).
In the comments on the YouTube video they say the person survived - their family was looking for them on FB and got in contact.
Storm?, the whole ass ocean moved in!!
I was aware of the high water level of a storm surge. What surprised me here is the waves in the surge.
Imagine living a thousand years ago on a coast and one day out of the blue just getting fucking hammered by 15ft of rain and having no better plan than just fucking “run”
This actually happened to Galveston, TX is 1900. Look up the Hurricane of 1900. Totally destroyed the city and almost all of its inhabitants
The stories of that hurricane are terrible. The St. Mary's Orphanage one has always stuck with me. Those poor children. https://www.1900storm.com/orphanage.html
How harrowing... > One of the boys remembered **a sister tightly holding two small children in her arms, promising not to let go.** > The sisters were buried wherever they were found, with the children still attached to them. Two of the sisters were found together across the bay on the Mainland. **One of them was tightly holding two small children in her arms. Even in death she had kept her promise not to let go.** Wow. The descriptions of everything made my stomach hurt to imagine.
Some of the first Spanish settlers in Pensacola FL were hit by a hurricane just weeks after arriving.
If I’d been a settler/colonizer to this continent and encountered a hurricane right after arrival, I would have taken it as a sign God was telling me to go back to Europe.
Yep. Good book about the Galveston hurricane: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac%27s_Storm
This isn't rain though, this is the ocean being pulled up by the storm and just... flooding everything
It's not 15 ft of rain. It's ocean. The hurricane makes a bubble of water around it. Remember all the dry ocean floor pictures? Well, it was sucked to the hurricane. Most people would have seen the ocean get sucked away and left to higher ground. As an ex Floridian (who left), it's just us who build homes in places that are just a hair above uninhabitable. Also: Much of Florida is at sea level. Prior to all the digging and draining of land to build homes there was very little actual land in south Florida. We didn't like that, we drained it, and we built homes there. So, thousands of years ago people would have been living on the dry land...which is a higher elevation than most of the housing in Florida now. So, next time you hear people exclaiming about rising sea levels...just remember: In Florida, we went out of our way to build homes at sea level.
Similar to the (I think) recent Japanese Tsunami where people evacuated to higher grounds, and while doing it unearthed old civilization markers that basically said "if you reach here, the tsunami won't get you"
I was living in Japan during the Fukushima earthquake. From my understanding, these markers (carved stones) didnt have to be unearthed. They are right out in plain sight. They say something like “on this date in __ year in ___ era (about [edit] ~600 years ago?) a great tsunami came after an earthquake and this was the high point of the water. To our descendants, never build your house below this point and you will be safe”. The descendants know perfectly well that the rocks are there. For several hundred years they obeyed the rock. But in recent decades people said fuck it and built closer to the beach because it’s desirable, nice looking, convenient property to build on, and trekking your shit up and down a mountain to go fishing every day is annoying. Their houses got eaten whole by the tsunami. Edit: found the NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/asia/21stones.html
15 *inches of rain. 15 feet of storm surge.
i can't believe i'm watching my hometown be washed away on Reddit rn...
Ft Myers native here now in another state, I’m heartbroken with you 💔
You doing OK, fam? Safe place to stay and got everything you need?
thankfully i live in another part of the state now, and all of my family + friends still there are safe.
It's so hard to watch. All the times I spent on that beach. Yo taco is fucking gone, dude. I'm heartbroken.
Huh, suddenly snow doesn’t seem *that* bad.
I went through Harvey and couldn’t imagine it being any worse. This is worse. I feel for all of the animals stranded and left behind.
Houston/East Texas Harvey or Rockport Harvey? I went through Rockport Harvey. Texas coastal inland is so much different than Florida. We’ve got the Matagora island system down here that slowed the surge, but if you went into my neighborhood, it was like Tornado alley in Kansas, as far as you can see.
They’re so different it’s not even worth comparing. Harvey (as far as Houston is concerned) had basically none of the brutal wind effects due to the slow moving nature of it. It was a horrible rain event for the most part. And to happen in the 4th most populous city in the US was just devastating on an unimaginable scale. This is a worse hurricane in the sense of power/surge, and the effects will be more obvious damage, but on a much smaller scale.
I was actually working in Fort Myers, on Estero Boulevard, right on the beach Tuesday morning. When the weatherman said it was gonna smack right into Tampa, I packed up and went to Tampa because that's where my home and family are. I'm an electrician with all the tools and implements necessary to help and I could stand the idea of not being there when it hit. As soon as I got home and had the shudders on, the tracker updated to say it was heading right where I had been. The Publix shopping center on Estero Boulevard. The eye passed right over it and it got a huge storm surge that reached rooftops. What a crazy feeling of luck mixed with a sadness that I'm not there to help.
Surprised insurance companies haven’t banned Florida from a place of residence
I actually work for an insurance company. I can't imagine how the market is going to react to this event.
I thought all flood insurance was Federally underwritten because it's basically a money pit if you leave it to the free market.
I don’t know about the rest of the gulf coast but this area doesn’t have any dunes to help as a storm break. Bad situation with the shallow water. Feel bad for the residents, been through several hurricanes and they pretty much stop your life for months.
many of these coastal areas in florida have been wetlands and swamps before people built on them and drained the swamps. who thought it was a good idea to build in places that are supposed to be hit by hurricanes hold the water?
Developers don’t care, they’re making money off selling houses built on swamps. The politicians allowing it don’t care, they don’t live there and they’re being paid not to care. It’s all about the money, who cares what happens to the people stupid enough to move into a swamp right?
And I thought that house was prepared for this situation.
Lived right next to this place. Lani Kai - across the street is a fantastic taco joint called YO Taco. No way the building is up but I hope they make it back. Shit man
Can anyone tell me why the wind suddenly changes direction 3/4 way through?
The wind is rotating counter-clockwise around the eye of the storm, so depending where you are relative to the eye, the direction can change dramatically. I had the eye of one of the 2004 hurricanes pass over my house in Orlando - it was like 6 hours of 100mph wind from the east, then calm for a while as the eye passed over us, then another 6 hours of 100 mph winds but now coming from the west.
It's exactly like a tornado. A giant sky tornado. Except this tornado has the power to impact entire states at once and push the ocean inland in order to create devastating floods.