Sam Lurie doesn’t hold back when recalling his experience with Hurricane Ian.
“I am just glad I survived,” Lurie said in an email to The News-Press.
The 67-year-old Lurie is alive today − three years after the historic hurricane crushed Fort Myers Beach − to tell his Hurricane Ian survivor story thanks in part to a 3 inch by 2 inch pool cage frame vertical pole that he tethered himself to for about two hours in 150 mile per hour winds.
Lurie knows he’s lucky to have lived through the storm that hit the region on Sept. 28, 2022, and even three years later, survivors like him can recall every detail of the horror as if it happened yesterday.
The News-Press and Naples Daily News connected with Hurricane Ian survivors like Lurie to mark the third anniversary of a storm that caused more than 100 deaths and made coastal areas in Lee County look like they had been put through a blender.
In Sunday’s editions of The News-Press and Naples Daily News you can read stories similar to Lurie’s tale.
Lurie, who graduated from Ohio State in 1979 and took on the role of “Brutus Buckeye”, would be the first to tell you that looking back, he made a mistake by thinking he could ride out the storm in his one-story waterfront house on Lagoon Road.
“It will pay to error on the side of caution going forward,” he said.
Originally from Youngstown, Ohio, Lurie said he moved to Fort Myers Beach the day he graduated The Ohio State. He spent the summer of 1978 working on the beach as manager of the Fun Center on Times Square at the Fort Myers Beach Pier.
“It convinced me Fort Myers Beach is a place like no other,” he said.
He purchased the house on the south end of Fort Myers Beach one month before Hurricane Ian.
Through the years Lurie was a tax accountant and the owner and captain of Jammin’ Sailboat Cruises located at Matanzas Restaurant from 1983 until 2001. From 1995 to 2015 Lurie was the tour manager for the rock band Bad Company with singer Brian Howe (former Fort Myers Beach resident) touring throughout the United States and even a brief time in Japan and Korea.
Since 1991 he has owned and operated Lurie Realty.
Hurricane Ian: Why did this Fort Myers Beach resident stay?
The house Lurie stayed at during Ian is one of two homes he owns on Fort Myers Beach. He also owns a two-story property on Estrellita Drive, which was also severly damaged during Ian.
“I didn’t have flood insurance on either house,” Lurie said. “(Ian) was a big shock, as during that 45 year period of living on Fort Myers Beach, the water barely came over anyone’s seawall. Hurricane Charley in 2004 was nasty with incredible winds and damage, but no substantial rising water damage.”
It’s didn’t take long for him to realize Ian was much different than Charley.
“By the time I realized how bad it was, taking that final turn, it was too late to leave,” he said.
The water rose and kept rising on Sept. 28, 2022 at Lurie’s Lagoon Road house. He said when the water from the historic storm surge was becoming too high at more than five feet inside the house, he worried about becoming trapped.
He said it “got dangerous” when all the floating furniture and loose items started playing “bumper cars” in the living room.
Lurie took action.
“I grabbed a wetsuit, styrofoam noodle and an extension cord, swam 20 feet to a newly installed aluminum pole in the pool cage and tethered myself,” he said.
The pole was secured to the concrete pool deck by a single tapcon screw.
“But it held in place,” Lurie said.
What was he thinking as he held on to the pole for dear life?
“The pole was the only thing stopping me from being carried to the mangroves bordering Waterside at Bay Beach for a very bad ending of serious injury or worst,” he said. “A lot of thoughts during the two hours on the pole. It resembled a bad dive trip gone wrong combined with a Wizard of Oz nightmare.”
Lurie said debris was flying everywhere. He watched the other side of his pool cage collapse. He said the fact he had a wet suit to put on was also a huge difference maker for his story of survival.
“As a long time diver, I realized donning the wetsuit was key to survival to avoid hypothermia,” Lurie said.
Conditions reached a point where Lurie untethered himself from the pole.
“I swam back to the sliding doors in the back of my house, entered, placed a chair on the kitchen counter, took a few pictures with my phone and came to the realization of what just happened,” he said. “It took about two hours for the water to rise, it stayed at that level about another two hours and two hours for the level to go down – what a mess.”
‘It was surreal. Everything I owned was destroyed’
Lurie said he stayed in his Lagoon Road house for three days after the storm and during that time he walked a half mile to his other house on Estrellita Dr. He said he was able to charge his phone, eat and when there was cell service, contact his friends and family to let them know he was alive.
“One of my bedroom mattresses floated on top of furniture and was dry to sleep on,” Lurie said. “There was little sleep to be had, with lots of helicopters, sirens and eventually the Red Cross. There was a six inch layer of muck and debris through out my house.”
He said broken furniture and sharp corners were everywhere. He also pointed out that unlike Hurricane Charley, where it was brutally hot, Ian’s aftermath weather was dry and pleasant.
After three days, Lurie gathered a few items and walked one mile to Santini Plaza where military vehicles were transporting residents over the bridge off the island to San Carlos Boulevard.
“I could not believe what I saw on that ride,” Lurie said. “Our beautiful Estero Island was destroyed.”
Hurricane Ian: Looking back three years later
Lurie said it took nine months before he could live in the Lagoon Road house and it was one year before it was completely redone. He chose not to replace the pool cage.
“I did save the pole and my deck still has the one tiny tapcon that anchored the 3 inch by 2 inche aluminum screen cage pole to the cement deck, still screwed in it’s original hole,” he said.
Lurie also saw first-hand how a community and family can come together in difficult times.
“My family, neighbors and friends helped in a huge way to get me back up and running,” he said. “That was one of the only bright spots of this experience. And now I know how a house it built – plumbing, electrical, drywall, kitchen, bathrooms – from bare cinder blocks to completion.”
There will be moe Hurricane Ian anniversaries and more reflection on what could have been for people, for survivors, like Lurie.
“I am very grateful I survived,” Lurie said. “Hurricane Ian’s power was gigantic and there was nothing I could do to suppress it. I was lucky, some of my fellow islanders were not. Never say never.”
This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Fort Myers Beach Hurricane Ian survivor: ‘I could not believe what I saw’
Reporting by Mark H. Bickel, Fort Myers News-Press / Fort Myers News-Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
