Fort Myers Beach businesses bouncing back after Tropical Storm Debby

Author: Jillian Haggerty
Published: Updated:

Restaurant owners are back to business after Tropical Storm Debby came roaring through Fort Myers Beach.

WINK News went to Nervous Nellies, and the general manager told us what they experienced.

“The water just started coming up, and once we knew there was water in the street, we knew we probably were gonna get water in our hostess area. We have flood-barriers
that we put up in the door, but they didn’t really work that well,” said manager Danny Timothy.

We asked Timothy if they had learned a lesson from this and if they would do anything differently.

“Just a little bit more preparations putting more sandbags on the outside, so we are kinda double covered, but when we rebuilt from Ian, we did actually built the place
down here, kind of water-resistant,” he said.

Right across the street from Nellies is Wahoo Willies, who told us there were around 25 people there during the Debby surge.

“Everyone that was here was stuck here with us. We were all stuck here for 6 or 7 hours. People had breakfast and lunch here before we were even able to leave,” said Bill Ignatti, general manager.

We asked Ignatti what they did to prevent the flooding.

“We had sandbags; we did get like 3 and 1/2 feet probably would be my guess on top of that full moon high tide already,” he said.

We asked Ignatti if he thinks the sand berms in the future will help.

“We’re pretty at nature’s will to come when they want to, so I don’t know,” he said.

Most of the restaurants on Fort Myers Beach have reopened, but we do know that at least one, Sandy Bottoms, decided to close for the remainder of hurricane season until October when they can put up their tiki hut.

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