Hurricane Ian on Sanibel: The Island With No Road Off
On 28 September 2022 Hurricane Ian's storm surge washed away parts of the causeway to Sanibel Island, Florida, and the people still on the island could leave only by boat or helicopter. The next day a Coast Guard rescue swimmer from Air Station Miami filmed his own descent onto the flooded streets. We read the record: the forecasts, the evacuation orders, the water sensors, and the Coast Guard's cameras.
Chapters
- 0:00 A swimmer leaves the helicopter
- 0:42 Sanibel and its causeway
- 0:59 Where the forecast pointed
- 1:31 Monday: the neighbours evacuate
- 2:15 Tuesday: the track moves south
- 3:00 Lee County's orders
- 3:28 Thirty-two hours
- 4:28 Wednesday: Category 5 offshore
- 4:55 The sensor on Sanibel
- 5:51 The gauge that stopped
- 6:50 The causeway
- 7:33 The Dolphin from Miami
- 8:40 Down the cable
- 8:53 By boat
- 9:04 The counts
- 10:13 The dead
- 10:41 What the record says
- 11:24 Next: the Privateer, Alaska
Transcript
A swimmer leaves the helicopter 0:00
This is the helmet camera of a Coast Guard rescue swimmer, leaving a helicopter over Sanibel Island, Florida. It is September 29th, 2022, the day after Hurricane Ian came ashore.
Sanibel is a barrier island, and on that morning there was no road to it. The storm surge had cut the causeway that joined it to the mainland. Getting off the island now meant going up a cable.
So how long did the people on that island have to leave? And what does the record say decided who came back? This episode reads it: the forecasts, the evacuation orders, the water sensors, and the Coast Guard's own cameras.
Sanibel and its causeway 0:42
Sanibel sits off Fort Myers, in Lee County, on Florida's Gulf coast. About six thousand three hundred people live there. The causeway is about three miles of bridges and fill. The spans standing in 2022 had opened in 2007.
Where the forecast pointed 0:59
Four days earlier, the forecast track did not run through here. The hurricane center later wrote that its forecasts for Ian leaned consistently to the west of where the storm went. But the cone of uncertainty always contained the point where it came ashore.
By Monday, Ian was aimed at Tampa Bay. The 5 p.m. advisory put the hurricane warning from Englewood north to the Anclote River, Tampa Bay included. For the coast around Fort Myers, it forecast four to seven feet of surge.
Monday: the neighbours evacuate 1:31
That Monday, the counties to the north began emptying their coasts. Charlotte County ordered its Zone A out at 3:30 in the afternoon. Pinellas, on Tampa Bay, at 6. Sarasota, at 7.
At 7 that evening, the weather service briefed Lee County. It showed ten to fifteen feet of surge for the barrier island of Pinellas County, near Tampa. For Lee County, the peak forecast stayed at four to seven feet.
Lee County's plan, as reported later, calls for evacuations when there is a ten percent chance of six feet of water or more in the most vulnerable areas. On Monday night, the forecast was below that line.
Tuesday: the track moves south 2:15
Then, overnight, the track moved south. At 5 a.m. on Tuesday, a hurricane warning went up for the Fort Myers area. And that morning, the surge forecast for the beaches went from four to seven feet, to eight to twelve.
This is Coast Guard Air Station Miami that Tuesday, getting ready. At Coast Guard Station Fort Myers Beach, a petty officer later described the same morning: they woke up, saw the storm had shifted, and moved the station's boats within about an hour.
He said they took them up the Caloosahatchee River, across Lake Okeechobee to Fort Pierce, on the other side of Florida, and waited out the storm there. The Coast Guard was evacuating its own boats from Fort Myers Beach.
Lee County's orders 3:00
At 7 a.m. on Tuesday, Lee County issued its first mandatory evacuation orders, for Zone A and parts of Zone B. At 8:45, it expanded them to all of both zones. Sanibel is in Zone A.
That was a day after several of its neighbors. The county's after-action report notes that the short time between the orders and landfall was scrutinized, and that the timing matched the county's existing plans.
Thirty-two hours 3:28
So count it. From 7 a.m. on Tuesday to landfall the next afternoon was about thirty-two hours. That was the survival window for leaving Sanibel by road. And the people on the island had to decide inside it.
Sanibel's mayor, Holly Smith, wrote to residents as the orders came out. There was still, she wrote, a window of opportunity to vacate the island. This storm is different. She was concerned for everyone's safety.
Many did not go to shelters. On Tuesday, the county's shelters stood at eighteen percent of capacity. It asked officials on the barrier islands to drive their communities and urge those left to reconsider.
At 6:30 that evening, the county sent an emergency text. Seek shelter, or shelter in place, by 8 p.m. After that, leaving was no longer what the county was asking for.
Wednesday: Category 5 offshore 4:28
Overnight, Ian passed over the Dry Tortugas and kept strengthening. At 8 a.m. on Wednesday, it reached its peak: one hundred and forty knots, a Category 5, out over the Gulf.
At about 9:40 that morning, the county issued a shelter-in-place alert. Police, fire and ambulance responses were suspended. From then on, nobody on Sanibel could expect anyone to come until the storm had passed.
The sensor on Sanibel 4:55
On a beach in the eastern part of Sanibel, the U.S. Geological Survey had placed a pressure sensor at the toe of the dune. It measured the water every quarter of a second. We read its record.
At 11 a.m., the water there stood at about six point seven feet above the survey's datum. At 2 p.m., it stood at thirteen. It peaked at 2:08 in the afternoon, at thirteen point one feet.
That peak came almost an hour before landfall. The eye of Ian crossed the coast at 3:05 p.m., on Cayo Costa, a barrier island just to the north, with winds of a hundred and fifty miles an hour.
The hurricane center later mapped what that water meant on the ground. On the eastern part of Sanibel, nine to thirteen feet of water above ground level. Survey teams found marks of six to nine feet across the island.
The gauge that stopped 5:51
To the south, the federal tide gauge on the Naples Pier recorded six point one eight feet above high tide at 1:06 p.m. Then its record stops. The hurricane center says the station was destroyed. The real peak there is unknown.
Across the bay, on Fort Myers Beach, the hurricane center put the water at ten to fifteen feet above the ground. This is the Coast Guard's video of the beach two days later. About nine hundred structures there were destroyed.
Across Lee County, the hurricane center counts at least fifty-two thousand structures affected. Five thousand three hundred and sixty-nine were destroyed, and more than fourteen thousand received major damage.
And up the Caloosahatchee, the gauge in downtown Fort Myers kept rising into the evening. It peaked at seven point two six feet above high tide at 6:30 p.m. The surge had turned the river around.
The causeway 6:50
Somewhere in those hours, the causeway went. This is what a Coast Guard Dolphin crew saw the next day. The surge had washed away the fill between the bridges.
The spans were left connected to neither the island nor the mainland. The hurricane center's report says it plainly. Roads and bridges to Sanibel and Pine Islands were washed away, limiting access to either by boat or helicopter. The road out had closed for good.
Search and rescue in Lee County began at about 2 a.m. on Thursday. In the first thirty-six hours after landfall, responders worked through more than seven hundred pending fire and medical calls.
The Dolphin from Miami 7:33
On Thursday, Coast Guard helicopters reached Sanibel. This MH-65 Dolphin came from Air Station Miami, on the other side of the state. The swimmer's camera is on his helmet.
On the ground, he walks a flooded street toward a house. The water is still standing, a day after the peak. The people he is looking for are waiting there. The Coast Guard counted two people and a dog in this one hoist.
The Dolphin cannot land in this street. It hovers, and the flight mechanic lowers the basket on the cable. The swimmer puts each survivor in, one at a time, and signals the mechanic to bring it up.
Then the swimmer rides the cable up with the last one. Here, that is the dog. The Coast Guard titled its video: two people, one dog.
The same crew kept going. Its video around Sanibel that day shows water up to car windows, and a swimmer wading with a pet carrier toward the basket. This hoist was two people and three cats.
Down the cable 8:40
The next day, another Dolphin crew from Miami worked the island. This camera looks straight down the cable from the helicopter's door, at a rooftop deck. Three people were lifted from this house.
By boat 8:53
Not every rescue came by air. Members of the Coast Guard's Strike Teams took inflatable boats into the canals near Sanibel, looking for anyone still there.
The counts 9:04
On Friday, the commander of the Coast Guard district told a Miami station his crews had sixteen aircraft up through the day and night, and had rescued ninety-five people. By October 6th, the Coast Guard's count was seven hundred and forty-six people, and ninety-four pets.
Those are the Coast Guard's numbers alone. Counting every agency, the state of Florida reported more than sixteen hundred rescues by the morning of October 2nd, and twenty-five hundred by mid-October.
On Saturday, October 1st, three days after landfall, a Jayhawk from Air Station Clearwater was still searching Sanibel. Its swimmer walked the streets, and the helicopter took another survivor up.
North of Sanibel, Pine Island had lost its bridge too. This is the Coast Guard's drone over its canals. Strike teams carried more than a hundred people from Pine Island to the mainland by boat.
For Sanibel, the county's after-action report records one more Coast Guard operation. It organized a ferry, to carry the city's residents off the island to the mainland, by water.
The dead 10:13
The count of the dead came later. The hurricane center attributes sixty-six deaths in the United States directly to Ian. Forty-one were drowned by the surge, and thirty-six of those were in Lee County.
The causeway reopened, with temporary repairs, on October 19th: twenty-one days after the storm. Until then, the Florida National Guard flew vehicles and equipment onto the islands, under its helicopters.
What the record says 10:41
So here is what the record supports. The window to leave Sanibel by road did not open when the wind arrived. It opened on Tuesday morning, when the forecast moved, about thirty-two hours before landfall.
On Wednesday, the water on the island rose more than six feet in three hours, and peaked before the eye arrived. When the causeway went, those still there had one way out left, and it came down on a cable.
Off the Bounty, the clock was the sea. In Houston, the rising water. On the Alaska Ranger, the raft. Off Virginia, the last few feet to a basket. On Sanibel, it was the road off the island.
Next: the Privateer, Alaska 11:24
Next: December 2022, Prince William Sound, Alaska. A fishing boat called the Privateer was being slammed against the rocks of Esther Island, with three men and a dog aboard in survival suits. A Coast Guard hoist camera recorded what happened next.
Description and sources
On Monday 26 September the forecast aimed Ian at Tampa Bay, and Lee County's peak surge forecast stayed at 4 to 7 feet while neighbouring counties ordered their coasts out. Overnight the track moved south; on Tuesday morning the forecast for Fort Myers Beach rose to 8 to 12 feet, and at 7:00 Lee County issued its first mandatory evacuation orders. Sanibel is in Zone A. From that order to landfall at Cayo Costa (3:05 p.m. Wednesday, 150 mph) was about 32 hours. Our read of the USGS sensor on Sanibel: the water rose from about 6.7 feet at 11:00 to a peak of 13.1 feet (NAVD88) at 2:08 p.m., an hour before landfall. The Naples Pier gauge stopped recording at 1:06 p.m. The fill between the causeway's bridges washed away. Coast Guard crews from Miami and Clearwater hoisted people from Sanibel from 29 September to 1 October; by 6 October the Coast Guard's count was 746 people and 94 pets. The NHC attributes 66 U.S. deaths directly to Ian, 41 to storm surge, 36 of those in Lee County. The causeway reopened with temporary repairs on 19 October.
PRIMARY SOURCES
- Bucci, L., Alaka, L., Hagen, A., Delgado, S., Beven, J. Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane Ian (AL092022), 23-30 September 2022. National Hurricane Center (original 2 April 2023; revised 12 March 2026). https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL092022_Ian.pdf
- Lee County, Florida (2023). Hurricane Ian After-Action Report. https://www.leegov.com/hurricane/Documents/AAR/Lee%20County%20Hurricane%20Ian%20AAR.pdf
- National Hurricane Center. Hurricane Ian Advisory 15 and Discussion 15, 5 PM EDT 26 September 2022. https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2022/al09/al092022.public.015.shtml
- NOAA CO-OPS, verified water level and predicted tide, stations 8725520 (Fort Myers) and 8725110 (Naples), 27-29 September 2022 (our read). https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/
- USGS Short-Term Network, Hurricane Ian (event 325): sensors FLLEE26290 (Sanibel Island) and FLLEE03382 (Fort Myers Beach Pier), wave-filtered storm tide (our read). https://stn.wim.usgs.gov/STNServices/
- WGCU (27-28 September and 19 October 2022): Lee County evacuation orders; Sanibel mayor Holly Smith's letter; Sanibel Causeway reopening. https://www.wgcu.org/
- WKGC (26-27 September 2022) and The News-Press (10 October 2022): evacuation orders in neighbouring counties.
- Lee County DOT: Sanibel Causeway history (current bridges opened 8 September 2007). https://www.leegov.com/dot/tolls/lw_facilities/san
- WSVN (30 September 2022): RADM Brendan McPherson, Coast Guard District 7. Bay News 9 (6 October 2022): Coast Guard count of 746 people and 94 pets.
- Office of the Governor of Florida (2 and 14 October 2022): statewide rescue counts.
Survival Window reads a rescue through the record it left: the crews' own cameras, the instruments nearby, and the reports listed above.
About the material. The video is U.S. Coast Guard footage (Air Stations Miami and Clearwater, the National Strike Force, MSST Miami, Station Fort Myers Beach, Air Station Kodiak) and Florida National Guard footage, released through DVIDS, public domain; where a shot is from another day or place than the narration describes, the narration says so. The water levels are our own reads of NOAA and USGS public data. Every diagram is drawn in code from the sources listed. Nothing in this video is AI-generated imagery.
The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense or U.S. Coast Guard visual information does not imply or constitute endorsement. This channel is independent and not affiliated with the U.S. Coast Guard.