As Florida officials issued evacuation orders for Hurricane Ian, local journalists hunkered down to document the storm.
Among them were Kate Cimini, a Florida investigative reporter for the USA Today Network, and Harriet Heithaus, a Naples Daily News arts and entertainment columnist. The two have been driving around Naples and Bonita Springs to survey the damage wrought by a category 4 hurricane that made landfall less than 50 miles north of them.
Poynter’s Angela Fu talked to them Thursday, and you can read her full story here.
Floodwaters pushed boats into the street and sucked houses away. A tornado near Heithaus’ condominium complex sent a carport toppling. At one point, the journalists had to pause their reporting to help Heithaus’ friend, who was stranded on her roof, along with her father, who has Alzheimer’s, and a neighbor with dementia.
“Part of your job, even as a journalist, is becoming something of a first responder,” Heithaus said. “It’s very unnerving, but the reason we’re all in this business, I think, is to help people.”
In addition to dealing with massive piles of debris and floodwaters, journalists working in the area have had to navigate power and cell service outages. WINK News, which is based in Fort Myers, had to go off the air Wednesday night after the first floor of its studio was flooded.
In a story posted on their website Wednesday, WINK News director of local news and content Tom Doerr said they would broadcast from their TV and radio stations once they had their generator running. Meanwhile, their journalists have continued to report on the storm’s devastation via social media.
The damage has been more widespread than anything Heithaus, who has lived in the area for 22 years, has seen before.
“I’ve been through three other hurricanes,” she said. “I’ve been through some bad hurricanes. This one was wider in scope than any of the others and had much more storm surge associated with it.”
A look at Ian’s destruction
Local and national news sites shared images of the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, and they’re all devastating. NPR has a collection that’s both big picture and small, showing a neighborhood churned to sticks and a couple with a boat in their apartment complex in Fort Myers. The Tampa Bay Times, which Poynter owns, has a team in Fort Myers. Their work shows rescue and the realization of what hit the state. USA Today Network’s collection shows the crumbled Sanibel Causeway, sunken boats and uprooted trees.
There’s more coverage that might help us understand just how bad things are in parts of Florida. CNN has a drone video from Fort Myers. The New York Times published a flood map to show the places hit the hardest. And The Washington Post published the video of a hurricane hunter who flew into Ian’s eye.
For perspectives from people in the communities hit hardest, many newsrooms turned to social media to republish photos, videos and first-hand accounts. Fort Myers’ News-Press has a collection from Twitter, TikTok and Instagram. Forbes published accounts from TikTok. And Poynter’s PolitiFact debunked a viral video thought to be a walrus seen in the flood waters. It was actually a seal in Chile.
‘A true hero’
A reporter for WESH 2 in Orlando rescued a woman who got stuck in floodwaters after attempting to drive through a flooded street. Afterwards, video of Tony Atkins carrying the woman on his back made its rounds on the Internet.
According to WESH, the nurse was on her way to work when her vehicle became stuck in high water near where the journalists were working.
In a later broadcast, Atkins told his anchor colleagues that he and his photographer had been turning a number of cars around for some time. The woman’s car got stuck. “Then I saw a hand come out. I heard ‘Help,’” Atkins said. He said he looked around for alligators, downed power lines, and even law enforcement to see if someone could rescue her.
“I just used caution and I just decided to slowly make my way out there and just help her out,” he said.
