It’s the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico that bring people to Fort Myers Beach – but on Wednesday afternoon they unleashed the fury of Hurricane Ian.
A tsunami-like storm surge, 3m (10ft) high in places, swept away homes and businesses.
The waterfront has been leveled – now littered with the remnants of the shops and restaurants that made it a bustling tourist resort.
First reports of ‘substantial loss of life’ – Hurricane Ian updates
T-shirts and baseball caps from a souvenir shop, pots and pans from a seafood cafe and glasses from a bar are partly obscured by brown sludge, a reminder of what was formerly.
A little further up the road, a flight of stairs is all that remains of the orange beach house.
The story of its occupants is told by their neighbor, Ron Shepherd, who witnessed the house being lifted from its foundations by a torrent of water.
“I was on the balcony and I could see it floating,” he says. “There were three people and a dog inside and we were yelling at them to get out and grab another house they were passing that was unoccupied. They got out but were swept away. A guy clung to a palm tree for two minutes but then it went away, the water was moving so fast.”
Person who stayed in Fort Myers Beach as Hurricane Ian disembarked expected him to be so vicious or do such extensive damage.
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Widespread destruction in Florida
Wyatt and Brooke Jordan stayed in a building just set back from the waterfront with their four children.
“The water came up pretty quick,” Wyatt said. “I’ve lived in Florida all my life and I’ve never seen anything like it. We went to bed Tuesday night and thought he was heading to Tampa, then we woke up and he was coming for us.”
Read more from Sky News:
Dramatic before and after footage shows the scale of the destruction
Residents say they escaped the eye of the storm
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How climate change is fueling hurricanes
So many people seem to have been surprised by the path this storm took – but also by the vast area it covered and how slowly it moved.
This is what will cost Florida the most, both in lives lost and in recovery.
