Rick continues protesting FEMA from his Fort Myers Beach roof

Writer: Paul Dolan
Published: Updated:
rick roof
Rick protesting FEMA from his Fort Myers Beach roof. CREDIT: WINK News

Rick on the roof is resolutely continuing his FEMA protest, from eating dinner to spending the night on his roof.

Rick says he has been on the roof for over 27 hours, Thursday, and the clock keeps ticking on. He doesn’t plan on leaving, while the town has no plans of budging when it comes to how they have to comply with FEMA regulations.

The garage was connected in some way to Rick’s house, which washed away during Hurricane Ian.

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Rick protesting from his roof. CREDIT: WINK News

FEMA’s regulations say that, technically, the giant garage was attached to the home pre-Ian and, therefore, cannot be considered an accessory structure after the fact.

Leaving them with one option, convert the garage into a stand-alone accessory that complies with the code as a normal house would or knock it down.

“At this point, I think it’s going to take someone from the state level to come down here and prove to my engineers and architects and things like that. This is what it is. I mean, I’m not the only one suffering here. There are a lot of people in the town, there are other issues. There’s still staff issues within the town, and there are issues with the state. I don’t know why they jumped in this argument, you know, with the lateral additions. It had nothing to do with them. It has nothing to do with floodplain at all,” said Rick. “There’s a lot of people that showed up after the storm that pretended like they cared. It’s about time, it’s been about a year, almost a year, and we are suffering here. Not just me.”

He said he has received support from onlookers.

“You see all these residents going by and beeping and pulling up,” he added. “They’re doing that for a reason. They’re all suffering too. It’s time someone shows up and says, ‘Hey, we are here to help,’ like they did before.”

WINK News also learned that the old Fort Myers Beach Town Hall will be demolished on Friday at 8:30 a.m.

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