Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Even if the place you are staying is not damaged, the power will be out for weeks.
Even when power is restored, resources will the limited. Hospitality/restaurant workers will be attending to their homes and families. Hurricane Recovery takes weeks, months and even years.
I’ve been through several major hurricanes. It does no good for anyone to make blanket announcements that the entire Southwestern coast of Florida won’t be recovered “for years.” Yes, in the next weeks and until the power is back on and the downed trees cleared etc, people will be preoccupied with clean up/repairing roofs, etc. There will be areas that saw the worst of the storm surge that will have very little left. Hurricane Michael, a storm as strong as Ian, leveled the town of Mexico Beach to the foundations and yes, it took a couple of years to rebuild. But in my experience, it won’t be everywhere, and there will be places that were affected less than others, and they may be relatively close to places that were obliterated. Just a few feet in elevation makes an enormous difference. The places that were wiped out will be on the news, and people will assume the entire state looks like that. These people will need tourism to return, when they’re ready. Recently, someone on this board asked if the Keys had recovered from Irma, and that was 5 years ago, for heaven’s sake. It won’t be next week, for sure, and some of the barrier islands may be permanently altered. There will be older low-lying neighborhoods that are flooded out, but many newer neighborhoods are built to withstand storm surge. We’ll see how well the new building codes work.
The point is — we won’t know how badly any particular area was affected until the sun comes up tomorrow. It *is* a guarantee that it will takes weeks to restore power, clean up debris, and see where they are. Some areas will be in for a long haul of rebuilding, and some will not.