Speaker 1: Billy cunning Won the Great American. Of course, Southwest Florida
Speaker 1: is under a terrible condition because of Hurricane Milton, happening
Speaker 1: almost as we speak. Joining you and I now is
Speaker 1: the Mayor of Fort Myer's Speech, the honorable Dan Allers
Speaker 1: and Dan Allers, Welcome again to the Bill Cunningham Show.
Speaker 1: I think we did this a couple of years ago
Speaker 1: with another Hurricane Ian. Can you tell us as we
Speaker 1: sit here this Wednesday afternoon, as the leader of Fort
Speaker 1: Myer's Speech, what is happening now as we speak.
Speaker 2: Well, we're just starting to see the first effects of
Speaker 2: the storm. We've got some pretty good wind and some
Speaker 2: pretty good rain, but it hasn't gotten to us yet.
Speaker 2: But we're going to be expecting some serious surge. Nothing
Speaker 2: as high as e Ian, hopefully, but somewhere in the
Speaker 2: eight to twelve ranges what they're predicting.
Speaker 1: Now, let's go back a little bit in time. When
Speaker 1: I had you on two years ago with Ian, it
Speaker 1: was a terrible circumstance from Fort Myers Beach, Santa Bell
Speaker 1: in fact, even for Mars itself. Can you describe to
Speaker 1: the American people what you went through two years ago
Speaker 1: with Ian?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about Helene and now Milton. So
Speaker 1: what happened two years ago that you hope is not repeated.
Speaker 2: Well two years ago, you know when when Ian hit.
Speaker 2: Obviously that was about fifteen feet of storm surge. It
Speaker 2: was something that you know, nobody had really ever seen
Speaker 2: down here. It took out obviously, all our businesses, homes.
Speaker 2: There wasn't a structure on the island that wasn't affected
Speaker 2: from it. We took about a year to get most
Speaker 2: of that cleaned up and off the island and then
Speaker 2: we could start the rebuild. We've actually been making a
Speaker 2: lot of headway with getting homes built and people back
Speaker 2: in their houses and businesses being open, and then we've
Speaker 2: had this will be the fourth storm since Hurricaneian, so
Speaker 2: we're up to five now. This one is obviously as
Speaker 2: close to Ian. The other ones were water events, but
Speaker 2: this one is erily similar to what Ian was. Hopefully
Speaker 2: it's not as bad, but you know, we're going to
Speaker 2: see a little bit different. You know, every storms different,
Speaker 2: but this one I think is going to move a
Speaker 2: little more inland on the island than the last one
Speaker 2: since a lot of the structures are not there.
Speaker 1: And I know from our previous interview that you were
Speaker 1: born and raised in Minnesota, not exactly a place where
Speaker 1: hurricanes often happen. Are you questioning your decision to move
Speaker 1: from Minnesota to Fort Myers Beach?
Speaker 2: Not at all, Not at all. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: the thing between you know, a hurricane and a tornado
Speaker 2: is at least a hurricane you see it coming from
Speaker 2: a long ways away and you have time to prepare
Speaker 2: and get to safety. You know, a tornado, you don't
Speaker 2: have anything. And that's something that we're going through now.
Speaker 2: The outer bands were starting to get tornado warnings and
Speaker 2: we've had a couple of touchdowns in the mid middle
Speaker 2: of the state, Okachobee area. So no, I wouldn't change it.
Speaker 2: You know this one. We're a little bit smarter. My
Speaker 2: wife and I stayed on the island last time. This
Speaker 2: time we're evacuating, and I just got done going through
Speaker 2: the island, and I would say the greatest, I'd say
Speaker 2: ninety nine percent of our residents have left. We do
Speaker 2: have a few people that absolutely refuse to leave, but
Speaker 2: nothing like we saw with Ian.
Speaker 1: And Mayor Olurs of Fort Myer's speech. If those residents
Speaker 1: refuse to leave, do you do you handcuff them them,
Speaker 1: lock them up? What do you do?
Speaker 2: No, Unfortunately we can't go into their house and drag
Speaker 2: them out of there, but they they you know, we
Speaker 2: just try to get the message to them that every
Speaker 2: person that stays as a potential person that we're going
Speaker 2: to have to search for and rescue after, which is
Speaker 2: going to delay people getting back onto their island, onto
Speaker 2: the island, into their homes and and start the rebuilding.
Speaker 2: So I think people are you know, it's still fresh.
Speaker 2: Ian still fresh in their mind, and most of heated
Speaker 2: the warnings that got off the island, which is which
Speaker 2: is good. It's it's like a ghost town down here.
Speaker 2: There's there's really nobody around.
Speaker 1: I know from the last time. You actually live on
Speaker 1: Fort Myer's Beach, as the mayor described the American people
Speaker 1: when Ian hit them four cents, but Ian was the
Speaker 1: bad one. How was your home effected? How did you recover.
Speaker 2: Our home? We were fortunate were on one of the
Speaker 2: higher streets on the island, so we took about five
Speaker 2: and a half six feet inside our house, so the
Speaker 2: structure survived. Obviously everything inside had to be gutted. Many
Speaker 2: were not that fortunate. You know, they have to start
Speaker 2: from cleaning up the entire remnants of everything that they
Speaker 2: had and then you know, building again, and some have
Speaker 2: gotten back in. We were fortunate, we were able to
Speaker 2: just gut the inside. We lost all of our belongings
Speaker 2: like everyone else in our cars, but our structures survived,
Speaker 2: so we were one of the fortunate. We were able
Speaker 2: to get back in about a year eighteen months for
Speaker 2: the storm, so we haven't been back in all that long.
Speaker 2: And you know, I just left the house about an
Speaker 2: hour ago for the last time. And it's a very
Speaker 2: eerie feeling looking at your house, realizing that maybe last
Speaker 2: time you're ever going to see it.
Speaker 1: And as far as you've had four since Milton, this
Speaker 1: is a bad one. If Milton is the same or
Speaker 1: worse than me, and what happens long term to Fort
Speaker 1: Myers Beach.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the good thing is just you know, it's an
Speaker 2: island of doers. We're people that don't give up easy.
Speaker 2: Most of us are Midwesterners, and as you well know,
Speaker 2: Midwesterners are kind of stubborn people. We don't give up
Speaker 2: too easy. There's no doubt this is going to break
Speaker 2: some people's will, but we'll see, you know, try to
Speaker 2: hope for the best and plan for the worst, but
Speaker 2: we won't know until tomorrow afternoon kind of what we're
Speaker 2: what we're dealing with, and hopefully it's a lot less
Speaker 2: than what we're expecting.
Speaker 1: And Mayor Dan Allers of Fort Myers speech, what are
Speaker 1: you being told by the authorities when Milton will have
Speaker 1: its worse effect on Fort Myer's speech? And Santa Belle
Speaker 1: and Fort Myers. What time tonight or tomorrow are we
Speaker 1: looking at.
Speaker 2: We're looking at right around two am, so it's going
Speaker 2: to be the middle of the night storm that we'll
Speaker 2: probably see our peak surge. So by tomorrow morning we'll
Speaker 2: have a when the sun comes up, we're going to
Speaker 2: have the president under the tree, if you will, what
Speaker 2: we're going to be dealing with. But like I said,
Speaker 2: we're starting to see the if you watch the maps,
Speaker 2: and you watching the weather as we're speaking, and it's
Speaker 2: massive economy almost not even see four. There's so much
Speaker 2: white over the top of it's pulling in a lot
Speaker 2: of energy, so it doesn't look good. But there's still
Speaker 2: time to hope for the best. I guess that's all
Speaker 2: I could keep saying.
Speaker 1: And Mayor what about the high tide and the load tide.
Speaker 1: I know you're on top of that. As far as
Speaker 1: Fort Myers, Fort Myers Beach, Santa Bell one is low tide,
Speaker 1: one is high tide. And how does that impact the flooding?
Speaker 2: Well, obviously high tide is not ideal for us. I
Speaker 2: think high tides around four am. I were just told
Speaker 2: so two am four am is pretty close will be
Speaker 2: an incoming tide. It's not a huge tide, and we're
Speaker 2: getting quite a bit of rain, so it's kind of
Speaker 2: offsets itself. But you know, one foot here or there,
Speaker 2: when you're talking twelve feet of storm surge, it's it's
Speaker 2: it's it's not as relevant as if you're talking two
Speaker 2: or three feet.
Speaker 1: So if there's twelve feet of storm surge on Fort
Speaker 1: Myers Beach, the entire island will be underwater.
Speaker 2: Correct, Yes, that will be not a structure that doesn't
Speaker 2: have water in it.
Speaker 1: And then the recovery begins. And you gone through this
Speaker 1: beginning with Ian three other times and none as bad
Speaker 1: as Ian or I pray to God not Milton. But
Speaker 1: is there a fatigue setting in? I had some real
Speaker 1: estate agent told me and I have a home down
Speaker 1: in Naples, that there's a fatigue factor setting in. Have
Speaker 1: you sense fatigued by the residence of Fort Myers speech,
Speaker 1: You're tough, you're mean, you're nasty, you want to get
Speaker 1: up and fight like a warrior, Poe. But is there
Speaker 1: a sense that many residents are simply going to give up.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's a sense of people going to
Speaker 2: give up, but you know, to answer your your initial question, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's definitely fatigue. People are tired. You know, it's been
Speaker 2: along two years of rebuilding, has been a long two
Speaker 2: years of crying and blood and sweat and tears, and
Speaker 2: to see that all that work could be gone here
Speaker 2: again in the next twelve hours. Yeah, it's mental fatigue
Speaker 2: for sure. It's not physical fatigue as much as mental.
Speaker 2: But you know, we won't know what We don't know
Speaker 2: until tomorrow and see what we're dealing with. As I
Speaker 2: said earlier, you know, I think this surge is going
Speaker 2: to move a little more inland on our island and
Speaker 2: and affects some people that maybe were safe during Ian,
Speaker 2: that had the protection of some of the structures that
Speaker 2: took the blunt of it. So it's going to be
Speaker 2: a different wave of people that have a different, you know,
Speaker 2: different degree of damage.
Speaker 1: And lastly, isn't this isn't this unusual because people say, well,
Speaker 1: why do you live in Florida? But is it fair
Speaker 1: to say that before Ian whether it's Fort Myers Beach
Speaker 1: or Saraceta or Naples, whatever it might be, this the
Speaker 1: last two years have been terribly unusual.
Speaker 2: It is I was talking to someone that has been
Speaker 2: on the island for close to fifty years and she
Speaker 2: was telling me how it's it's, you know, for most
Speaker 2: of us that are are fairly new here, the transplants
Speaker 2: from the Midwest, you know, this is very unusual. But
Speaker 2: she said, it's almost it's almost like bell bottoms and mullets.
Speaker 2: You know. It goes in cycles. Every twenty years. They
Speaker 2: remember twenty years ago there was three or four or
Speaker 2: five storms that kind of came back to back, and
Speaker 2: then you get twenty years where you don't have anything
Speaker 2: and then come back around. And her analogy was this
Speaker 2: is just another one of the cycles.
Speaker 1: Hopefully this is the end of the cycle, because there's
Speaker 1: only so much, you know, mind can only comprehend with
Speaker 1: the butt can bear. And at some point it's like, well, Dan,
Speaker 1: you're a great American from Minnesota, tough as nails, and
Speaker 1: I'm glad you're in charge of Fort Myer's Beach and
Speaker 1: maybe we'll check in with you in a day or
Speaker 1: two to see the results. But a hunker down, get ready,
Speaker 1: say a prayer, and then we rebuild, and then we
Speaker 1: move on as Americans who never stop. We don't we reload,
Speaker 1: we don't stop. We reload and keep on going. But
Speaker 1: Dan Aller's the mayor of Fort Myer's speech this Wednesday afternoon,
Speaker 1: thank you for coming on the Bill Cunningham Show. We'll
Speaker 1: check in with you in a day or two and
Speaker 1: hold on. And God bless you, Dan, God bless you.
Speaker 2: Yep, thank you, Thanks Bill, thanks for having me. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Well, let's continue with more. There. It is Dan Allers.
Speaker 1: He is the mayor of Fort Myer's Beach. They're saying
Speaker 1: it's going to be a twelve foot surge and the
Speaker 1: highest point of Fort Myers Beach is about five feet
Speaker 1: above the Gulf of Mexico and that's a disaster. Head
Speaker 1: On top of that, the high tide is supposed to
Speaker 1: be at four am, and it builds between four pm
Speaker 1: and four am slowly, and it's supposed to hit at
Speaker 1: two am, and so it's going to be nearly high tide.
Speaker 1: Thank god it's not a full moon. And they're predicting
Speaker 1: ten to fifteen foot waves over the top of Fort
Speaker 1: Myers Beach and Santa Bell Longboat Key's going to be
Speaker 1: affected and so many other parts. It puts in perspective
Speaker 1: the fragility of human life. Let's continue with more. Bill
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