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One Week After Irma, Floridians Pick Up The Pieces

Debris lines a street near the beach in Naples, Fla. the day after Irma made landfall.
Meredith Rizzo
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NPR
Debris lines a street near the beach in Naples, Fla. the day after Irma made landfall.

It's been one week since Hurricane Irma hit Southwestern Florida. Residents in Collier County, where the storm made landfall after the Florida keys, are in the early stages of the recovery process still cleaning up debris, wading through floodwaters, struggling to get gas, and trying to get by without electricity. It will take months to fully assess the damage, and the rebuilding process could take years. Yet already they are looking ahead to the next steps. They are figuring out how to continue with their lives amidst the devastation.

Immokalee, Fla.

In the agricultural community of Immokalee, about 50 miles east of Naples, Olga Garza, shuffled through water surrounding her house. She's lived there for 37 years, and this is only the second time it's flooded. The first was when Hurricane Harvey hit. The entire property is covered in at least six inches of water.

Fernando Rivera helps out his wife's grandparents after their home flooded during the storm. Initially the water level started to fall, but Rivera says it has stopped receding.
Meredith Rizzo / NPR
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NPR
Fernando Rivera helps out his wife's grandparents after their home flooded during the storm. Initially the water level started to fall, but Rivera says it has stopped receding.

"It's not draining. It's just standing here," she says. "And you can smell it."

She said she's called the county and no one has responded.

Her granddaughter's husband, Fernando Rivera, helped wheel a grill out to cook dinner.

"We don't want the kids to get near [the water]," he says. "Especially after a hurricane, you don't know what's in it."

Ray Gonzalez says that although the aluminum roof of their produce warehouse was boarded up, they still sustained damage.
Meredith Rizzo / NPR
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NPR
Ray Gonzalez says that although the aluminum roof of their produce warehouse was boarded up, they still sustained damage.

Near the Immokalee Farmer's Market, Ray Gonzalez looks up at the damaged aluminum roof of the produce stall in which he's standing. He says they had boarded up the roof prior to the storm but it wasn't enough.

Other residents are waiting for electricity to come back on so they can cook, like Sixta Vidaurri and her granddaughter Amree Vidaurri.

Sixta Vidaurri and her granddaughter Amree Vidaurri stand outside their home. They couldn't cook without power and many of the grocery stores in town were still shuttered, two days after the storm.
Meredith Rizzo / NPR
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NPR
Sixta Vidaurri and her granddaughter Amree Vidaurri stand outside their home. They couldn't cook without power and many of the grocery stores in town were still shuttered, two days after the storm.

Standing outside his home, Alfonso Garza gestures to the debris in his yard. He says he isn't physically capable of moving it, and hopes someone will come to clear it.

Alfonso Garza (no relationship to Olga Garza), 70, stayed in a shelter during the storm. He returned to flooding in his house and debris which he couldn't clean up.
Meredith RIzzo / NPR
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NPR
Alfonso Garza (no relationship to Olga Garza), 70, stayed in a shelter during the storm. He returned to flooding in his house and debris which he couldn't clean up.

Ft Myers, Fla.

On Wednesday, a seasonally warm day, Shelia Lunsford, who moved to Florida three years ago from Alabama, was raking up debris in the heat at the Woodsmoke Camping Resort in Fort Myers. The RV and mobile home park had dodged the worst of the damage, but behind her an uprooted tree sat on top of a neighbor's parked car.

Shelia Lunsford is a year-round resident at Woodsmoke Camping Resort. She says many residents are snowbirds who want to know what happened to their property during the storm.
Meredith Rizzo / NPR
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NPR
Shelia Lunsford is a year-round resident at Woodsmoke Camping Resort. She says many residents are snowbirds who want to know what happened to their property during the storm.

"We're doing the best we can to get cleaned up," she said.

Many of the park's snowbirds won't return to Florida until at least October. So Lunsford has been photographing properties to send to absent neighbors.

"They're freaking out," she said. "It's helping them tremendously to see that there's damage or no damage."

Naples, Fla.

Naples resident Matthew Delagado, 26, says they were lucky the storm surge wasn't higher, but there's still a lot of cleanup to do. He walked down to Naples beach with friends to check on their families' homes.
Meredith Rizzo / NPR
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NPR
Naples resident Matthew Delagado, 26, says they were lucky the storm surge wasn't higher, but there's still a lot of cleanup to do. He walked down to Naples beach with friends to check on their families' homes.

In Naples, broken tree limbs lined the streets of upscale beach neighborhoods. The day after the storm, Matthew Delgado, 26, who grew up in Naples, walked down with two friends who were checking on family homes. He said he planned to spend all week cleaning up the neighborhood.

"Now the real work begins."

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

People take photos on the beach in Naples the day after Irma hit.
Meredith Rizzo / NPR
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NPR
People take photos on the beach in Naples the day after Irma hit.

Meredith Rizzo is a visuals editor and art director on NPR's Science desk. She produces multimedia stories that illuminate science topics through visual reporting, animation, illustration, photography and video. In her time on the Science desk, she's reported from Hong Kong during the early days of the pandemic, photographed the experiences of the first patient to receive an experimental CRISPR treatment for sickle cell disease and covered post-wildfire issues from Australia to California. In 2021, she worked with a team on NPR's Joy Generator, a randomized ideas machine for ways to tap into positive emotions following a year of life in the pandemic. In 2019, she photographed, reported and produced another interactive visual guide exploring how the shape and size of many common grocery store plastics affect their recyclability.