Recovering after Hurricane Ian

Picture above: Christian and Madline right after rescuers saved them from Hurricane Ian's flooding. They escaped with their pets, Sugar the dog and Cookie the cat.

As Hurricane Ian slowly dragged itself across Central Florida, my two oldest children (Christian, 22 & Madline, 20) woke in the dark morning hours to the sounds of lapping water. Within a few hours, they and their partners climbed into a rescue boat and fled the waist-deep waters now inside their home. My daughter sobbed on the phone while clutching onto her cat, the only treasure she could save.

Just one week before Hurricane Ian, my children signed the lease on a new home, eager to start a new chapter in their young lives. Life has shown us many obstacles, and my two kids have worked incredibly hard to get ahead in this life. After the hardships of the pandemic and ongoing inflation, I was proud to hear that two of them had finally found a house in the Orlo Vista neighborhood to rent. Renting with their partners, they were going to be roommates, supporting each other and continuing to be the best friends they'd always been.

The weekend Ian was brewing in the tropics, we were brewing a hot cup of coffee just before loading up all the cars with all their belongings. At the new house, we stacked clothes onto beds, unloaded a few pots and pans, plugged in the routers, and listened to music while figuring out where each box belonged. They told me they would prepare for the storm at the new house a few days later.

It was around 10 pm on Wednesday that they had lost power. Then, at about three in the morning, I got a call from my son. Water had been pooling into the kitchen, and they weren't sure what to do. I told them to find towels and old blankets and stuff them in the cracks. At first, they thought it was from the wind and rain, but then I could hear my daughter's panic grow when she said the water kept rising. What is a mother to do when she hears this coming from her babies and cannot help them?

Within minutes, the water was to their ankles. The car alarms started going off, and when my son opened the door into the covered carport to investigate further, he could only see the tops of their cars poking out of the water like little islands. The water was rushing in faster. My daughter sent me a picture of her sitting on the counters to avoid the rising level.

After calling my sister and brother, we got the kids in contact with rescue teams. They boarded little pontoon boats in the dawn hours. They then boarded a bus for Ocoee High School for shelter. After waiting at the high school shelter for seven hours, a family member was finally able to pick them up during a calm moment of the storm.

On Friday, when the skies were blue, and Ian had begun hammering the Carolinas, my children returned to the house to see what they could salvage. But the water levels never receded. Parking several hundred yards from their home, they grabbed their fishing canoes and began wading through the waste-high water.

The house was still flooded. When they opened the front door, only a tiny amount poured out. They saw that the living room, several steps above the ground, was completely flooded. All the furniture and housewares they scrimped and saved for--ruined. All their clothes and personal belongings were destroyed. Worse, the photos of the kids over the years, spending time with each other across the great fishing points in the area, now gone.

This Go Fund Me is set up to help my two kids get their feet back on the ground. Their rental company is helping them find a new home, but it will take time. The water wrecked their cars, their primary means of getting to work. It will take weeks to work with insurance to replace them, and their policies can only go so far in supporting rentals.

When they were ready to become the capable adults I know them to be, my two children lost everything in a catastrophic disaster. They are thankful for their lives, but the next several months will be trying for them--mentally, physically, and emotionally. Supporting this Go Fund Me supports two siblings as they rebuild their futures and recover from Hurricane Ian together.

Any money raised in this fundraiser will help support my children in:

Thank you.