‘Like the Gulf came in’: Hurricane Ian flooded this historically Black Naples neighborhood

Piles of damaged furniture, damp mattresses and broken electronics sat Saturday in front of most houses on the east side of Naples’ only historically Black neighborhood.

Hurricane Ian’s storm surge pushed muddy water from the Gulf of Mexico into the Gordon River and the canals that surround almost the entire east side of River Park. When residents saw the water creeping in on Wednesday, they say, it was already too late.

“The water came in from both sides,” Willie Sirmons, 74, told the Miami Herald, “so we were trapped.”

In a neighborhood where residents were already wary of being priced out, efforts to pick up the pieces after Ian are colliding with fears about what the future holds.

Sirmons has been living with his wife in River Park for over a decade, but he has been in the neighborhood at least 20 years. Behind their house is one canal and another is behind their neighbors’ houses across the street.

It all happened in a matter of minutes, he said. First, their backyard got flooded, quickly followed by their deck next to the canal, and then water started coming inside the house through the cracks of the wooden floor.

“That’s when we knew it was time to go,” he said.

With the water up to their chest, they walked to their daughter’s house down the street with only the essentials: photo IDs and a cellphone wrapped in a plastic bag. Their daughter’s house is on slightly higher ground, so they were safe there.

“It looked like the Gulf of Mexico came in,” said Sirmons, who lives about a dozen blocks from the beach.

READ MORE: Searching for survivors at Ian’s ground zero

By Saturday afternoon, after the city had hauled thousands of pounds of debris, new mountains of trash started piling up as the clean-up progressed.

As several city trucks came and went hauling debris, Sirmons — taking a short break from clearing out his home — pondered what will happen to River Park.

River Park has a long history as a majority Black enclave in Naples. In the mid 1900s African Americans were segregated in this neighborhood and kept away from white people through government-sanctioned, discriminatory housing policies called “redlining.” The neighborhood now includes residents from all races and backgrounds, including from Haiti, the Bahamas, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Several of his neighbors have been priced out of their homes in the last few years, with some houses being turned into short-term rentals. During Ian’s aftermath, more long-time residents could move out — or be displaced.

But Sirmons said that homeowners have a say in whether they move out or not. “If they want me out, they are going to have to give me my prize,” he said. “They can’t force me out.”

‘It was almost like it was a dream’

Barbara Fuller had heard on the news when the hurricane was approaching Florida that if she wanted to leave her home, she would have to do it immediately, she told the Herald. Having lived in the same house since 1999, she didn’t think Ian could be worse than Irma — also a Category 4 hurricane.

“The tides have never come this high before,” she said.

Fuller’s son, who lives with her, had to go to work at a nearby hospital. Alone in her house, she observed through a window how the canal by her backyard grew bigger and bigger. At the same time, the road in front of her house began to quickly flood.

“It happened in the blink of an eye,” she said. “I don’t think anybody thought it was going to get this bad.”

Fuller said she never panicked despite the life-threatening conditions. Her plan was, she said, to wait out the storm on top of her washer and dryer.

And even when her sister-in-law called to say she would pick her up, she initially declined because she didn’t want others to risk their lives for her. But when her sister-in-law got to her house and told her to “hurry up,” she finally realized she was in danger.

“It was almost like it was a dream,” she said. “It didn’t hit me right away.”

READ MORE: About 10,000 people still in Florida shelters after Hurricane Ian

After the hurricane, Fuller and her brother came back home only to find a water-damaged front door that barely opens, bulging floorboards and soaked living room furniture. They slept in the house two more nights but she began having trouble breathing — a sign that her home was likely no longer safe to live in.

On Saturday, three days after the hurricane made landfall, Fuller and her sister were packing their brother’s clothing and shoes — still dripping wet — inside of trash bags to wash them. Her plan was to get all the damaged furniture outside her house and temporarily move to a hotel, courtesy of her pastor.

“A lot of these houses are going to be demolished,” she said. “People are going to try to buy us out for a little bit of nothing.”

‘We have to keep the tradition’

On Saturday, the Collier County chapter of the NAACP and other organizations had set up tents in an empty lot to serve hot food. At the Stillwater Cove, a 95-unit apartment complex next to the Gordon River, a group of boys and young men had teamed up to remove mud from common areas the night before.

Gilberto Ayala, 38, lives with his wife and their four children ages 4, 8, 16 and 19 in one of the bottom-floor units at the complex. He said the river overflowed then the parking area quickly flooded. Water started coming into their unit under their front door. Ayala and his family began covering the door gaps with anything they could find.

Ayala said he knew they would have to evacuate when water also started coming in through the toilet and from under the bathtub.

“My little girl was crying,” he said in Spanish, referring to his young daughter.

And from there, it only got worse. Flood waters had risen beyond two feet, preventing the family from escaping out their front door. They left through a window.

Ayala’s wife, María Romero, 38, was the last one to get out. One of the scariest moments for her, she said, was when she felt cockroach-like insects touching her legs.

“That was frightening,” she said in Spanish.

They went upstairs and asked a neighbor of a second-floor unit to take them in. The Ayala-Romero family camped out in their neighbor’s living room from noon Wednesday to early Thursday morning.

On Thursday, Ayala went back to his unit through the window and began taking out the accumulated water bucket by bucket. He still couldn’t open the door because of how high the water was.

By Friday morning, he was back at his job gardening. The building didn’t have power and they were leaving mattresses outside to dry under the sun — no money to buy new ones.

Power came back to the building later that day, and the central air conditioning started to work again, but in their unit only one lamp was working. After Ayala got off work, he went to play soccer with the children at a nearby park while his wife used what was left of the kitchen and a gas-powered grill to make pupusas, a traditional Salvadoran delicacy.

“We have to keep the tradition,” he said.