Waters subsided but needs remain

By Tom Tracy - Florida Catholic

MIAMI | With the full picture of the widespread fallout and damages Hurricane Ian brought to southwest Florida still coming into focus, the Miami region looks on with a collective sigh of relief: What if Ian had hit here?

From Naples, just two hours from Fort Lauderdale across Interstate 75, up throughout the greater Fort Myers, Port Charlotte and Sarasota region, many residents and parish communities are facing a challenging close to 2022,  with the holiday season just around the corner. 

The post-Hurricane Ian landscape is expected to trigger housing, employment and other cost-of-living complications for the entire state, in particular to neighbors and friends on the Gulf Coast. 

“We saw wind damage and heard stories of those who stayed for the hurricane and the trauma they went through but some areas we have been to saw significant flood damages. The waters had subsided but the needs are going to be there,” said Peter Routsis-Arroyo, CEO of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami, who served as CEO of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Venice before moving to Miami. 

Routsis-Arroyo’s remarks followed a second tour of the area following Ian, during which he connected with his Catholic Charities counterparts in Venice and offered moral support at churches and drive-up emergency distribution sites in Fort Myers, Arcadia, Bonita Springs and more. 

“When you have a house with four to six feet of water coming in, I don’t know if this means your house is not going to be habitable or if you get some mediation done, but you will go through some pain and suffering while all of that goes on,” he said on Oct. 5, 2022. “And then there is the dealing with insurance companies, if you have insurance, and those who don't maybe dealing with loss of employment or work, inflation, higher costs. It’s all going to lead to making this a humanitarian crisis.”

 

FATALITIES, FLOODING

Lee County, which includes Fort Myers Beach, Pine Island and Sanibel, suffered the most fatalities related to Hurricane Ian, which made landfall on the state’s west coast as a powerful Category 4 storm Sept. 28.

Eddie Gloria, Venice Catholic Charities CEO, said the damage is greatest in the central corridor of Fort Myers and Lee County along with dispersed pockets of rural communities throughout the greater 10-county diocese. These areas suffered flooding as river waters spilled over into neighboring housing.

In the farming and largely Spanish-speaking community of St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Arcadia, in DeSoto County, inland from Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte, the Venezuela-born administrator, Father Luis Pacheco, said one week after the storm that as the flood waters have been receding the community was waiting for civil engineers to verify that all of the local bridges are safe. 

Not only did Hurricane Ian bring heavy rains and gusts of 140 miles per hour, it moved over the area at a creeping three miles per hour. 

“It took a few hours to cross the town, and in the meantime it brought so much force and water that the Peace River overflowed,” Father Pacheco said. “So one week after the hurricane we still had people who haven’t been able to leave their homes because they were totally flooded in.”

The National Guard troops working in the area were “heaven sent. They have done an amazing job and are the true heroes, and of course first responders,” the priest said.

The National Guard made their presence felt at the church by helping to deliver food and water to parishioners who were trapped by impassable roads and flooding in parts of this rural town known for its rodeo complex. 

St. Paul Parish’s 600 families have been invited to a morning drive-through food and water distribution at the church, which the local Catholic Charities staff help facilitate. 

The church campus lost its offices and its religious education classes and the church roof developed several leaks. As far as the welfare of the parish community, the church used its ministries phone trees to reach out and check on the safety of parishioners.

“We more or less know about everyone through that,” Father Pacheco said, adding that the people here are grateful, and sympathetic to areas such as Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel and Boca Grande which are experiencing greater suffering. 

“I learned that we are not to take life for granted, to be centered and to know that the most important thing in life is our relationship with God and each other and everything else is just temporal and not as important as perhaps it once was,” the priest added. 

 

UNCERTAIN FATE

Arcadia residents living in trailers may be facing uncertain fates as some of the trailer housing was toppled, flooded or severely damaged in other ways. 

“What I am planning to do is give distribution of food packages during the weekdays and then on the weekends hot food. The people bring it in coolers already cooked and from other parishes,” the priest said, adding hopefully, “Life has to go back to normal ultimately, God willing.”

Clara Alvarez, manager for education programs for Catholic Charities in Arcadia, said Hurricane Ian temporarily cut her off from accessing her brother who lives on the other side of the nearby Peace River. 

Her colleague Franz Sylvestre, another Catholic Charities employee , said the Haitian American community is suffering loss of work following the hurricane and have looked to the church for short-term food assistance. 

“As soon as the word spreads out we will see more people coming by for a bag of food or water. Some of them had damages to their homes but most of them are fine,” Sylvestre said. 

South of Fort Myers, in the suburban area of Bonita Springs and Naples, local newspapers reported that badly damaged trailer home communities were being indefinitely closed and residents forced to vacate on short notice —in a region where rents can run an average of $3,000 a month. 

In Bonita Springs, the Catholic Charities staff had a fulltime disaster recovery and drive-up distribution site in full swing at their after-school program, food pantry and human trafficking/victim assistance office, which appeared busy with drive-by distributions right up to 5 p.m. on a recent weekday. More than 214 documented households were served on Oct. 5.

“This morning we were busiest around 10 a.m. to noon and they came back in the afternoon, coming from around the Imperial River area with its three migrant camps,” said Paulina Matias, director of the Catholic Charities offices in Bonita Springs. 

One of the migrant camps remained evacuated due to fears the nearby river would rise and flood the housing unexpectedly as it had in other places. 

“Some of the clients are living in shelters still or are displaced somewhere, in a living room with friends or families,” Matias said, adding that transportation is an issue with the agency’s clients. “So when they find a ride they will show up here.”

Families who indicate they had roofing damages are eligible for temporary roofing tarps as well as ongoing case management services and emergency funding through Catholic Charities. 

“What we heard today is that some children lost everything in the flood: clothing, toys, and parents are concerned that when they start school back up they will have anything,” Matias added. 

Routsis-Arroyo said that everything he and his colleagues have seen these first two weeks following the hurricane is the first and early stage of what will be a long path back for southwest Florida — an area that has now seen a string of hurricane landfalls over the last decade including 2017’s Irma. 

“There is a sense of resilience in the people here,” he said. “They need help and yet they are not giving up their life or homes for Florida. This is home for them and they will just need help to pull it back together.” 

YOU CAN HELP

• Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami, Inc., is seeking your support to provide essential resources and immediate relief to Florida’s southwest coast after Hurricane Ian.
• The agency is now accepting financial donations through www.ccadm.org. One hundred percent of donations will be used for Hurricane Ian relief efforts. Financial donations are preferred.
• Groups that want to take a collection of goods and transport them over to the west coast should first contact Catholic Charities CEO Peter Routsis-Arroyo at [email protected].