Fort Myers Beach cleans up together after Milton

The Fort Myers Beach community has been through so much during the last two years, and the list of challenges they have to get over just seems to grow.

Now, we are meeting a man who is explaining exactly how people on the island feel.

WINK News spoke with John, who said he evacuated his daughter’s home because of Milton and returned to the island on Thursday to a mess.

In a few weeks, he will be 82 years old.

“This time I got 37 inches in the garage. Nothing went inside the house,” said John. “I went through Charley and everything else between. We are staying.”

Now, he has to do this again.

“A lot of mud. I don’t know why that mud always comes in. That mud is everywhere. My daughter and son-in-law came, and we cleaned out the garage,” said John.

John showed WINK News reporter Asha Patel around his home. WINK News could see water in his garage, debris and items surrounding his home.

“We can go right down the side here. You got boots on, he got white shoes, it’s gonna turn grey. Let’s go,” said John. “This isn’t my lumber. This all came from a job site down there before the storm. They told all contractors, ‘Take care of your stuff.’ The loose stuff that’s a main problem. I didn’t throw out the rug. You can see how high the water line is, it came up to here.”

While John has a lot of cleaning up to do, he told WINK News that the island is resilient.

“Neighbors work together. I cleaned up a bunch of his stuff. You know, we help each other out,” said John.

Now, WINK News has been seeing a lot of neighbors helping neighbors throughout the island and they all say what John said: “We’ll get through this because we have been through worse.”