A Fort Myers Beach business owner is key to recovery after Ian

Sharon Fairclose owns three businesses in Fort Myers Beach and lives on a canal in the Palm Isles community, a bridge away from the beach town. Her gray house is built on a tin roof so she converted the lower floor into an apartment. What once made way for that is now a pile of trash in front of her house because of Ian’s flood.

“We’ve never had water in this house … we built this house in 2001,” Fairclose said. But we can tell it like OK, we can get some water at the bottom. So, we put everything up to about 4 or 5 feet tall. But then it went 8 feet.

To get into the apartment from the outside, we had to walk past piles of cluttered family photo albums.

Generators powered the fans that dried the former residence. The room was just a shell of itself, stripped down to the wall studs. There were small items that could be saved in the corners.

The Fairclose family used the splash screens as drying racks for their wet family photos.

“This was a bedroom,” she said. “Fortunately, we have a really incredible staff. They’ve really stepped in and we’ve already torn down all this drywall.”

Fairclose and her husband own three water recreation businesses in Fort Myers Beach. In one day, their livelihoods were destroyed and their homes were destroyed.

Waves and winds from the storm swept through the heart of Fort Myers Beach. Restaurants, bars, stores and condominiums from mid-island to the Matanzas Pass Bridge were completely leveled or collapsed, with mud and debris pouring out.

For now, Fairclose is focusing on fixing up her home. Her business employs about 30 people and since they are all out of work, she hires them to help her clean.

“The water came here,” said Fairclose, pointing to the wall above her head.

“And I don’t know how you describe the things on the floor. It’s like dirt, mud. When we got here after the storm, it was like three inches of black soup mud. It sticks to your walking boots.

This is the ground floor apartment of Sharon Fairclose's house, which was gutted and burned after Hurricane Ian. — This is the ground floor apartment of Sharon Fairclose’s house, which was gutted and burned after Hurricane Ian.

Then Fairclose led me into the backyard, where her next-door neighbor’s 30-foot boat was nestled between two palm trees—the bow pointed toward her house.

“Luckily, there was a palm tree there. If not, he would have floated to our house. And our neighbor … called us in the middle of the storm. And he said he saw the boat sailing towards our house. And he swam to throw a line over it and tie it to a tree and try to sweep it away.” she says.

We went back to the apartment and climbed a small staircase to enter the house. There was a knee-high water line in a foyer near the front door. It was here that she left her stashes of photos to ride out the storm, saying they were safe.

“Then I guess the boxes must have floated because when the current came in it went in really fast,” Fairclose said.

There is another small staircase leading up from the foyer to the main floor. It is dried there so that they have a safe place.

“The bottom floor is a complete disaster, but at least at night, we can go upstairs and it feels like, well, a little bit normal. There’s no lights, the water is running but it’s okay,” she said.

Water pressure is really low and the water they have has to be boiled. But at least her house is standing. Here businesses are not sure about her.

“I could never find it,” she said. “Our businesses are on the beach, so we do jet skis, parasails, boat rentals, all those fun things at the resorts. So the resorts I know of are all badly affected. We’re expecting to be out of business for a year I guess.

Her biggest concern, she says, is paying her employees. Her plan is to take some of the work away from FEMA or hire marine contractors to help with recovery efforts.

“We have boats, we have captains, we have people who want to work. So, I’m ready to put them to work,” she said. “And we’re going to change our business model for a while. Then when the beach is open, we will go back.

Fairclose has not yet been able to return to shore because all her vehicles were destroyed by the storm. Access to the bridge was also restricted due to the search and rescue mission.

But it’s an embarrassing sight for those who work there.

Major thoroughfares such as Old San Carlos Boulevard and Fifth Street, which turns into Estero Boulevard, were cut off to allow emergency vehicles to pass, as trucks piled with sand and debris were pushed to the side of the road.

Mountains of debris stand between parked law enforcement vessels and thirsty water.

Mixed in with the rubble are clothes, hats and shoes from destroyed tourist shops. Some still have security tags attached.

Businesses and residences looked like they had been bombed from the inside – most were completely destroyed.

And all that’s left of the fishing pier that used to go out from the beach into the Gulf of Mexico is a few pilings and a ramp leading up to it.

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