Wall lives in an apartment behind the restaurant. The patio at Ricaltini's was destroyed in the hurricane. Ryan Wall owns Ricaltini's restaurant and bar that was severely damaged by Hurricane Ian in Englewood, Fla. "Those are my hood vents for the kitchen. "It just took that whole structure and ripped it off," he said, pointing to ruined equipment torn from the rooftop. All those things are just pretty much gone." The outdoor patio is wrecked, littered with big screen TVs torn from their mounts, and mangled metal awnings. "I ended up having to get rid of all my food, my freezer, my coolers. "It's pretty much a total loss right now," says Ryan Wall, the owner of Ricaltini's restaurant and bar in Englewood. Huge boat storage warehouses are crunched, blue tarps cover leaky roofs, and business owners are taking stock of what's left. "I've never been challenged like this."īack on the mainland in Charlotte County, recovery from Hurricane Ian is also proving to be a challenge. "It's been mentally tough actually," he says. It survived Category 4 Hurricane Charley that year but Day says he wasn't prepared for what Ian wrought.
John Day, an IT consultant and father to three teenage boys, built his house on Little Gasparilla Island in 2004. Saul Martinez for NPR Recovery is a challenge In less than a week a ceiling is covered with mold at the Day house. Jake Day steers a boat on his way to clean up his home that was damaged by Hurricane Ian on Little Gasparilla Island, Fla. "I don't know what kind of mold it is, but it looks like black mold and it's covering the entire bathroom ceiling." "This is the worst," he says, walking to the back of the house. Black rings are forming around the light fixtures, and the drywall is soaked in one corner where the roof may have lifted. "There's a piece of my house over there in that neighbor's yard," he says. A deck railing is gone, the house's siding is stripped from the north side of the building, and one wall is completely detached. "Right now, it's just pure survival mode," says John Day.ĭay climbs the front stairs and is met by disarray. Some structures were completely knocked off their pilings. Just about all of the 500 or so houses on the island suffered serious damage.
Power crews are working on the island, but there's still no electricity. Saul Martinez for NPR Residents are in ‘survival mode’ Homes were destroyed by Hurricane Ian on Little Gasparilla Island, Fla. So for now he's helping his dad clear debris and try to salvage what they can from their two-story home on Little Gasparilla. Jake is a senior in high school but his classes have been postponed because his school is being used as a shelter for people displaced by the storm. Jake echoes his dad's view of what's ahead of them both here and in other hard hit communities in Southwest Florida. "I think it's going to be years of recovery," says Day. You can see the destruction as the boat eases up to the dock - hundreds of downed trees, brown vegetation, power lines on the ground, and pieces of metal roofing strewn all about. Little Gasparilla Island has only ever been accessible by boat. "This is the biggest storm I've ever seen," says John Day. They're just starting to assess Hurricane Ian's impact more than week after the storm made landfall south of here. John Day and his 17-year-old son Jake loaded up their Carolina Skiff this week with a case of water, and other essentials at a marina near Englewood, Fla., to make the short boat trip to their home in Little Gasparilla, a two-and-a-half mile barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico.
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