Trail of destruction across Florida after Hurricane Milton

AccuWeather

Homes and businesses are being rebuilt as life slowly returns to normal in Fort Myers, Florida, in the morning of Oct. 11, shortly after being devastated by Milton's storm surge and flooding.

Transcript

00:00Ali, good morning to you. And we know Fort Myers saw a lot of destruction before landfall.

00:08Right. Ari Burney. And I wanted to go from the neighborhood where we saw that tornado damage

00:14even before Hurricane Milton made landfall to now the downtown area of Fort Myers. The big thing

00:19here, they saw a ton of flooding. We're talking five to six feet of storm surge just in this area

00:25alone. This was one of the locations, by the way, that we were looking at as Hurricane Milton

00:29was making landfall. And boy, this is a very different scenario this morning from what we saw

00:35almost two days ago at this point. So many businesses are now rebuilding, and it really

00:41is a breath of fresh air to see them all back, getting back to a sense of normal, right? I want

00:46to point something out for you guys. Look at this. This business here, Bruno's of

00:502024. This business was supposed to open in a matter of days. Unfortunately, looking inside

00:58of their business now, they do have a little bit of flood day from looking through the window here.

01:03Not anything. And I think a lot of people in this area are breathing a sigh of relief,

01:08because if you saw what it looked like back when Hurricane Milton was making its way through

01:13that town, I'd think you'd be thinking a little bit differently here. Let's take to this video

01:17on your screen. This is what we were able to shoot during as Milton making landfall perspective

01:25of what it looked like. Wow. Impressive. Six-foot storm surge. And nearly every block here, Fort

01:34Myers downtown, by the way, it's not a big downtown area, but it certainly is big enough

01:38where if you were to see how much flooding there actually was, it'd take you back a little. It

01:42definitely was shocking. But pretty much every single street here in the downtown area was

01:47completely flooded out. But I will say, and a lot of people have been saying the same thing,

01:51as quickly as it came is as quickly as it went, which was a very positive thing here for this

01:57neighborhood, especially because of the amount of restaurants, shops and businesses here. This

02:02could have been detrimental for an area like this. Thankfully, that's not the case this morning.

02:07Again, let's bring you back live. The best thing I can hear. Oh, we love the sound of the generators

02:13of people working. That is the noise that we are hearing all around the Fort Myers downtown area

02:18today. Again, pointing your direction to the workers down the street here, trying to get back

02:23to a sense. Of course, we want a sense of normal in this area. They want to be reopened. They want

02:31to be making money for their business. And that is what they're going to be doing today. Again,

02:36a lot of people already trying to get back to that sense of normal.

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