Hurricane Ian blasted Pine Island like never before. The community is sticking together

As Mike Romeo walked down his street near the south end of Pine Island, he could barely muster words.

“Oh my,” he said, rounding the bend on Stabile Road in St. James City, a laid-back Old Florida town where the general store advertises “even colder beer.”

He and his wife left in a panic at 3 a.m. before the storm hit with only the clothes on their backs. He hadn’t yet seen his house after the hurricane.

After catching a boat ride from a good Samaritan to bypass a washed out road and bridge, Romeo, 53, hailed a ride on the island’s main drag by sticking out his thumb, hopped on the tailgate of another family’s pickup to get into the neighborhood, and finished his odyssey on foot.

He slowly took in the destruction that Hurricane Ian left behind in his neighborhood. Boats upside down in yards, high water marks on walls, swamped cars being aired out with open doors and second floors of homes ripped apart. And the sky. The storm cut down countless slash pines that inspired the island’s name, opening up the sky and views into neighbors’ yards.

“It’s starting to feel real,” he said, just before a red Mustang slowly pulled forward from the end of the road. It was his neighbor Billy Dutko, who rode out the storm in his one-story condo on the edge of a canal that swelled and spilled into his home. Each had hoped the other was okay.

Romeo put his hand on Billy’s arm and gripped it tight.

“It’s good to see you brother,” Romeo said.

Dutko’s face started to crack, and he slipped his fingers under his sunglasses. Streaks of grime showed how high the water rose in his car, which somehow still ran.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” he said, sobbing quietly.

Dutko turned around and parked his car after the reunion, one of many that brought the already tight-knit community in this town even closer after Category 4 Hurricane Ian bludgeoned the Gulf Coast.

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

Dutko would later clink beer bottles with Romeo, who found his stilt house still standing and his boat still running. A screened porch was ruined. Gas tanks he’d prepped for his generator were gone, as well as the good mango tree. The “crappy one” still stood.

“I hope I can replant that,” he said.

Toast to surviving and thriving

The beer, at once celebratory and mournful, flowed freely in St. James on Friday. The town is one where unassuming “flip-flop millionaires” raise glasses with low-income locals every day. Forty-eight hours after Ian flung a 40-foot catamaran onto someone’s house, laid waste to some mobile homes and swamped living rooms, the toast was to surviving. And hopefully, one day again, to thriving.

“We’re not all in the same boat,” said a woman grilling burgers outside Low Key Tiki. The local American Legion Post 136 was emptying freezers and inviting the island to have burgers. “We’re all in the same ocean.”

They’ll cook until they run out, but they’ll drink well past the ice melting. John Kendall, 75, sat in his driveway in just swimming trunks with a warm rum and coke. His wife Mary Kendall, 65, came out of the house with wet hair. It was her first shower in days, because the county had turned the water on for a few hours to give residents a chance to wash up — but not to drink it, unless it was boiled.

Some residents may come back, and some may not after Ian’s wrath. For Dutko, who had water rise above his kitchen counter after he fled, mid-surge, into a neighbor’s stilt house, this is home. He intends to keep it that way. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t terrified by a storm that “sounded like a freight train” and “felt like torture” to endure.

Some might think of them as “saltwater cowboys” for wanting to stay, he said. “We just never imagined it would be this bad.”

Many hurricane veterans were shocked by Ian’s ferocity.

“On the inside of our house is an inch of sludge on everything. Every pot, every pan. Every thing of medicine. Just absolutely everything,” said Mary Kendall, who’s owned a home on Pine Island for 32 years and been a permanent resident for 22 years after retiring from Michigan.

“It’s just stuff,” her husband chimed in. “We’re fine. Our neighbors are all fine. Cat’s okay. It’s just stuff.”

There was no shortage of kindness in Ian’s wake on Pine Island. Neighbors checked on one another and on each other’s properties if folks were out of town. They offered each other rides in trucks, utility task vehicles and golf carts — lending bicycles when engines wouldn’t start. If someone couldn’t get off the island on a boat operated by first responders or others helping to shuttle supplies, then people were quick to open the doors of their lantern-lit homes.

Vigilant in a disaster

St. James City residents were also being vigilant that no one would take advantage of the disaster by stealing from damaged homes.

“We got martial law here,” said Craig Stevens, a third-generation Pine Islander and owner of the Monroe Canal Marina. “Everybody’s packin.’”

Stevens has witnessed a transformation in the community. He used to party at a waterfront house on the southern tip of the island that one of his late friends owned. Many good times in that house over many beers, he said. Six months ago, his wife Staci Stevens, a Realtor, sold the house for about $2 million, a high price amid a recent real estate boom. Now, they wonder if property will ever trade like that again.

After the hurricane, most of the back half of the house was either completely gone or in pieces. Just over the canal, shreds of debris were strewn about roads coated with several inches of slick mud. Two blown-out trailers were off-kilter.

“This was our local fish house,” Stevens said. “There’s nothing there.”

Local residents said Pine Island’s grit will help them recover and rebuild. But unless officials rebuild the roadway through Matlacha, the historic district that was largely leveled by storm surge, then everything will be harder. Debris removal. Restoration of power. Shipping food and supplies. Getting school up and running.

“It kinda sucks not having anyone to talk to,” said 10-year-old Fin Stevens, Craig’s son. “I want to see my friends at school.”

“We’re a good community, and we’ll pull together,” said Vickie Stokes, who lives in nearby Bokelia, on the north end of Pine Island. “But patience is going to run out.”

Local firefighters are taking an approach that rubs some of the residents the wrong way, by telling them to just leave. They are trying to relay that message especially to people who are medically dependent on energy. Neil Kerr, a local firefighter, said it took two trips to one man’s home to convince him he wasn’t going to get the dialysis he needs unless he evacuated.

“We got him off yesterday,” Kerr said.

Still, some will stay as long as they can because this is home, despite the widespread damage.

As Dutko finished a tour of his property, a neighbor and old friend pulled up. They came with more libations and a dinner invitation.

“Not too bad when you got friends bringing you lobster tails,” he said.