Couple returns to Lovers Key condo post Ian

While Hurricane Ian is long gone from Southwest Florida, many are still feeling its impacts.

Bob Irzyk and his wife’s story is one of many for those affected by Ian.

The condo lobby was destroyed after Hurricane Ian ripped through Lovers Key Beach Club.

“My wife and I actually stayed during Hurricane Ian; we’ve got hurricane windows,” Irzyk said. “We were perfectly safe and everything, so we watched the 155-mile-an-hour winds banging off of our windows and everything, and we were perfectly fine right here.”

After 27 months, the 13th-floor condo is finally fixed and in livable condition. During that time, Irzyk was unable to live in his home due to the hazards in the lobby, which prevented the building from staying open.

“You have to really compartmentalize things,” he said.

If you had seen Irzyk in action, you wouldn’t have recognized what he was going on at home.

“I was out working with St. Matthew’s House and working with people who were kind of in the same boat, so to speak, who were struggling, had lost their home had now become homeless,” he explained.

He’s done his job at St. Matthew’s House, helping people who needed it more than he did.

“Whether it was giving them food, whether it was giving them shelter, that was huge for me, and it kind of separated me from my issues,” Irzyk said. “They were still the issues that I had to come home at night to, unfortunately.”

Finally, he’s in his own home once again.

“It really felt like Christmas Day on that point because we kept waiting and waiting and knowing it was coming and coming, and it just never came,” he said. “And at some point, it was like, is it ever going to come? And finally, it did.”

For him and many others, home is where the beach is.

There’s still more work to be done at Lovers Key. Their front gate still doesn’t work, and Irzyk and his neighbors told WINK they put that deposit down almost a year ago.

The hot tub isn’t full, and much of the lobby furniture isn’t replaced yet.

These are all afterthoughts. Irzyk told WINK News he was happy to be back home
at Lovers Key Beach Club.