Help pregnant wife & I recover from Hurricane Ian

Hello my name is Silvio.

On September 28 and 29 my nine months pregnant wife and I unfortunately experienced some of the worst devastation caused by Hurricane Ian. We got hit by the northwest part of the storm.

To prepare our home for the upcoming storm I drove down from Orlando, where I’ve been working. I wanted to make sure everything was secured and safe as we would hunker down for Ian, at home, along with family.

As everyone knows, Ian entered Florida much stronger than projected at a Category 4, almost 5, instead of 3. And instead of speeding on through our state it took its sweet time, slowing down and slightly changing paths enough that where we lived was affected more than we could have predicted.

We’ve gone through numerous hurricanes throughout our lives, so we thought we were prepared by having flashlights, generators, plenty of water, and gas to be able to be okay without electricity for an extended period of time. During the early part of Wednesday we kept an eye on our surroundings and kept track of how intense the wind, rain was along with what trees were falling or structures seemed to be moving. Once we saw a palm tree fall down and our internet tower collapse we knew it was best to stay inside from

there on out. Around 2pm was when we lost power. The winds didn’t let up and started knocking more things around the property down. With no internet or electricity it became harder to keep track of what Ian was doing. Cell phone reception became extremely spotty.

Trying to figure out what was going on outside of our home felt futile so we kept entertained by talking amongst family, organizing the house and supplies.

Somewhere between 10-11pm my wife was feeling very tired with hurting feet from all the activity of the day and we decided to try to get some rest. Not long after settling down my wife’s sister knocked on our door and somewhat frantically told us to look outside the windows. When we did we realized the outside of our property was turning into a river, and it explained why we had seen flashlights coming from our neighbor's property as we later found out that they were out in the storm attempting to find and save their cows, which sadly did not make it.

Not long after we see the water outside, we knew there’d be no sleep for us that night and we started mobilizing as we heard a family member yell that water was coming into the house already. We began piling our possessions onto the bed and throughout the house raising up important items, including my wife’s new baby glider that we had just unpacked that day. Many half-nervous jokes were made throughout the ordeal about her going into labor, but thankfully she’s still quite pregnant, as personally one of my biggest worries the whole time is what we would have done had it happened.

My in-laws and myself were discussing what our next steps and options would be. We kept checking the water levels and they were rising pretty quickly. We decided to go check outside to see if there was a path towards our neighbor whose house sits higher than us. We went outside and checked, but by then the waters were too deep to safely get the rest of the family across to his place. So then we decided to check on my project bus, that I’ve been slowly working on to convert to an RV, and it was still standing and the water levels were just reaching the middle of the steps. At that point we knew that was our best choice to stay dry and we needed to get everyone moved there.

We began making the back and forth treks from bus to house first bringing in our pets. Once that was done the water outside was reaching just below our chests prompting me that I needed to get my wife to the bus ASAP since she’s shorter than me. I guided her through the home, which was becoming increasingly difficult to get through with all the floating furniture, objects, freezer and fridge tumbling over, etc. I did not tell my wife until the next day that during our initial scouting we’d had to side step a venomous snake coming our way. She was grateful to not know until after the fact.

After the women of the house were safe in the bus, we continued making more trips bringing in water, food, some dry clothes, and our towels. During this time my father-in-law came in with our two front neighbors who had sent out an SOS text to my sister-in-law that they could not get out of their home without help. Once the water was already reaching our necks we knew we needed to stop making trips and stay put in the bus.

We monitored the water in the bus and it kept rising. The front of the bus was already getting close to our knees, the back of the bus was by our ankles. Around 3am we called for help from emergency services and got the disheartening reply that they would get to us when they could. We emphasized that we had a pregnant woman and my eight month old nephew there, but that did not change anything. Then it was another few hours of anxiously waiting for the sun to come out.

Around 7ish am when the sun came up the water stopped rising. Everything outside was still and we made a call to a church friend to see if they could help in anyway.

By around 1pm or so a neighborhood couple came in on their boat and soon after our friend on his airboat. We loaded our pets, what we could of our stuff and ourselves onto both and began the relay of switching from boats, to ATVs, to airboats, to smaller boat, until we finally made it close to our local fire department.

One of the guys that helped rescue us kept saying how lucky we are. We feel blessed and grateful to be alive especially the more we find out about how much damage and how many lives Hurricane Ian took. We lost a lot of our material possessions, including unrecoverable memories like albums, journals, etc. and had plenty of scary moments, but we are alive and more than anything so grateful our first child will be with us sometime soon.

The road ahead is challenging especially having to reacquire all the baby items we already had bought or been gifted for our upcoming little one.

This is our story. If you feel called to help in anyway, first your prayers are appreciated above anything else, second if you’d like to contribute monetarily then we will be absolutely grateful for whatever you do give. I don’t know what lessons we are meant to learn from this, but one thing is for sure that it’s been a humbling experience.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, your thoughts, prayers, and anything you decide to contribute!