Fort Myers, Fla. — Francine Cole’s problem was depressingly common in Florida this week. First, there was too much water. Now that’s not enough.
Cole, 50, lives in a two-story apartment on Florida’s West Coast. This apartment was damaged by Hurricane Her Ian and was flooded. After the storm, she and her husband found themselves trapped on her second floor in the county. There, the water system was broken, there was little power, and many taps, including hers, were dry.
Cole said the downstairs reeked of sewage. She had bought several cases of water before the storm, but now she had to decide whether to use it for cleaning or to drink. She and her husband tried cleaning it with water from a small pond, but found it ineffective. It was dirty. they were thirsty.
“We are really worried,” she said.
Hurricane Ian, which made its second U.S. landfall on the South Carolina coast Friday afternoon, caused visible and tremendous devastation as it cut a path across the Florida peninsula heading northeast earlier this week. Witnessing, it destroyed homes and businesses along the Gulf Coast, leaving behind a tangle of trees. Limbs and debris further inland.
But with the power needed to keep water flowing in some areas lost, and storms cutting water pipes, some of the most serious problems in the state are looming large, including the impact on the water system. It was not so easy.State water issues reflected in regularly updated water issues List of boiling water recommendations Managed by the Florida Department of Health. On Monday there were no notices to report. Nearly 50 advisories were issued on Friday.
“As far as I know, all cases are related to hurricanes,” Department of Health spokesman Jay Williams said Friday.
Boiling water advisories, which alert residents to possible biological contamination of water systems, can be issued for a variety of reasons, often caused by malfunctions or damage causing pressure loss and other problems. will be Residents of low altitude areas are usually instructed to boil water for drinking and cooking for at least 1 minute.
But in some of the hardest-hit areas, the water was not coming out of the taps. And the electric stove owner had limited options in a state where more than 1.7 million electricity consumers had no access to electricity as of Friday afternoon.
Some of the areas on the boiling water list were small, like Spanish Maine Travel Resort, an RV park in Hillsborough County on the western side of the state. In other cases, the recommendations target entire cities, such as Bartow, Fla., about 20,000 cities near the geographic center of the peninsula, where water systems have been cut several times.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said Friday it had sent 1.6 million liters of water to Florida and promised to ship another 6.6 million liters. The water is part of a vast federal response focused on providing basic human services, including 5.5 million meals, more than 400 ambulances, four aircraft, and more than 200,000 people in nursing homes and hospitals. Other facilities evacuated medically vulnerable people.
But the worst problem was in Lee County. A severely damaged water system affected a population of nearly 760,000, forcing residents to search devastated landscapes for bottled water distribution points, and state and federal officials I was forced to improvise some creative solutions.
On Friday, Cole and others were given water at the Next Level Church in Fort Myers. There, volunteers in orange shirts (most of the houses had no power or water) piled cases of water and food in the trunks of waiting cars. Volunteers pasted yellow sticky notes with numbers reflecting the number of occupants in the household on each driver’s door. This is a desperate aggregation of 13, 6, 1.
Victoria Kent, 28, who parked her car with her 8-year-old daughter in the back seat, has been living out of a juice box for the past two days. She didn’t get paid until the end of the month and she didn’t have the money to buy last-minute storm supplies, including extra water.
Anyway, she said she had to keep working — selling insurance over the phone from home — until the power was cut. They had little food and were completely out of water. “We were just driving around to see who could help us,” she said. “And I’m under half a tank.”
This problem was affecting not only the facility but also the residents. As of Friday morning, her three hospitals in Lee County were without water and administrators had to evacuate some patients, said Mary, president and chief executive officer of the Florida Hospital Association. Mayhew said. “The public water system is broken and hospitals either have no water or the water pressure is completely inadequate,” Mayhew said in her telephone interview.
But later in the day, Kevin Guthrie, director of the Florida Emergency Management Division, said at a press conference that the state had “fixed the water problem” by installing tanks at hospitals and “carrying about 20,000 gallons of water.” It’s a temporary solution,” he said. 5 times a day” to each hospital. Guthrie also said more than 14,000 gallons of diesel fuel have been shipped to Fort Myers for use in the water plant that supplies the hospital.
Down the road from the church on Friday, three large water trucks were parked behind the Gulf Medical Center, which was busy with ambulances and helicopters coming and going. The Florida National Guard was handing out bottles of water and food at the nearby Lee County Sports Complex.
At a news conference Friday morning, Gov. Ron DeSantis named the water issue as one of the most pressing issues he has spoken with federal officials, saying, “It’s critical to get that infrastructure back up and running. ‘ said.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers tweeted Friday that its experts were meeting with county officials and said workers would use water trucks to “pressurize critical facilities to find and repair leaks.” I pointed out that I started the
Water challenges were different further inland. In central Florida’s Polk County, Ian was assaulted Thursday night, littering the streets and powering out thousands of people. Also, on Friday morning, 55 of the county’s more than 350 “lift stations” lost power.
Polk County utility manager Mark Addison said one short-term solution would be to warn people to conserve water and install systems that could pipe dirty water back to their homes. I said to try not to overwhelm.
The ultimate solution, which speaks to another infrastructure challenge looming over Florida, was to restore power quickly.
Mitch Smith contributed to the report.