HURRICANE IAN'S BRUTAL PATH UTTER DEVASTATION

IN THE AFTERMATH OF ONE OF THE STRONGEST STORMS EVER TO HIT FLORIDA, THOUSANDS ARE LEFT HEARTBROKEN AND HOMELESS-AND ENTIRE COMMUNITIES ARE GONE

- JOHNNY DODD

As fisherman Matt Ruffing, 39, and his son Blaze, 20, pulled their boat up to the rubble of the tiny fishing village of Matlacha, Fla., in the wake of Hurricane Ian, they could hear a woman sobbing.

Amid the tangled pipes and splintered wood, concrete and glass, they saw her inside a boat, her bone poking through the flesh of her leg. “She was crying,” says Matt, “but not about her leg. Her husband was trapped inside their house with a broken back and couldn’t get out.”

Matt, Blaze and medics were able to help her and her husband, but many others weren’t as fortunate. “It was like a bomb went off,” Matt says. Seeing bodies trapped in the wreckage—people fatally battered by the storm and debris—was heart-wrenching. “I knew,” says Matt, “this storm was going to hit close.”

Hurricane Ian—with 155-mph winds, up to 18 in. of rain and 7-ft. storm surges that destroyed bridges and flooded communities—tore through the region on Sept. 28, decimating cities like Fort Myers Beach. President Joe Biden said the Category 4 hurricane—considered the fifth-strongest ever to hit the U.S.—“could be the deadliest hurricane in Florida’s history.” (At press time 100 deaths had been confirmed, but officials say the number could go much higher.) And Florida governor Ron DeSantis described the walls of water that inundated portions of the state as “basically a 500-year flood event.”