Three Years Later: Shining a Light on Hurricane Ian's Unseen Damage

The new WGCU Public Media documentary Rising: Surviving the Surge tells the story of how Hurricane Ian devastated vast swaths of Southwest Florida in 2022, and it’s filled with dramatic firsthand accounts of what it was like to live through the storm and its aftermath. Rising was created in collaboration with the National Endowment for the Humanities, Florida Humanities, the Community Foundation of Tampa Bay and the Community Foundation of Sarasota County, and it’s an important document, because it captures how much Ian changed our understanding of hurricanes, as well as hurricane recovery.

While the terms “disaster relief” and “disaster recovery” are often used interchangeably, they, in fact, denote two distinct phases: “Relief” refers to efforts to meet people’s immediate needs after a storm (think emergency food and shelter), while “recovery” is focused on the long, arduous work of rebuilding, which can take years. We see both phases in Rising. The film showcases the selflessness and bravery of neighbors pitching in to help neighbors survive Ian, while also following the plight of residents trying to fortify and elevate their homes in anticipation of the next storm.

That dovetails with the mission of the Community Foundation’s Suncoast Disaster Recovery Fund, which was created right before Ian made landfall. The fund has awarded nearly $6 million since then in response to that storm, as well as the disastrous 2024 hurricanes, and priority areas include, yes, helping people repair and rebuild their homes, but also helping address needs that are perhaps less obvious. Those include case management services for homeowners, support for childcare providers to allow parents to return to work and mental and behavioral health care for storm victims.

That’s huge. In Rising, filmmakers Janine Zeitlin and Tom James profile multiple Ian survivors who report feeling a terrifying sense of déjà vu as Hurricane Helene and Milton churned toward Florida in 2024, reawakening the stress and trauma caused by Ian.

Just this year, the Suncoast Disaster Recovery Fund has issued grants to nonprofits like SRQ Strong, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Resilient Retreat and others that are helping survivors deal with the long-term aftershocks of storms like Ian. Such work is vital, because we know that while we may have so far this year experienced a slow hurricane season, it’s not a matter of if we’ll experience another major storm, but when.

Kirsten Russell is the vice president of community impact at the Community Foundation of Sarasota County.