(CNN) — A week following Hurricane Ian hit Florida, residents of one of its barrier islands will be able to return to see their homes Wednesday for the first time since the cyclone devastated the once-peaceful community.
Ian destroyed a portion of the causeway connecting Sanibel Island to the mainland, setting the stage for days of evacuations by air and sea as crews searched for those stranded.
Sanibel Island residents who return to assess the damage to their community will be shocked, said City Manager Dana Souza.
“It’s going to be emotional when they see their properties up close and the amount of damage this storm has done to them,” Souza told CNN.
People load supplies onto a boat in Matlacha, Florida, to be taken to Sanibel Island on Tuesday.
Homes that may look good from the outside may still be too damaged to live in, Sanibel Mayor Holly Smith said.
While residents will have access to their properties, the island remains “extremely insecure,” Smith said.
“There are many places that are not habitable. There are places outside of its foundation, and it’s very dangerous out there,” said Sanibel Fire Chief William Briscoe. “There are alligators around and snakes everywhere.”
Souza also described the devastation, saying most power poles and transmission lines are down, along with sewage systems. “Without that necessary infrastructure, it is difficult to sustain a community of 7,000 people throughout the year,” added Souza.
“It will be some time before we can resume normal life on Sanibel,” he said.
The island’s year-round population is regarding 7,000 people, but it increases to 35,000 during the high season, which is regarding a month away, according to Souza.
It might take a month or more to restore power to some areas of Sanibel and Pine Islands, Karen Ryan, director of public relations for the Lee County Electric Cooperative, told CNN.
“It will be much easier to restore power once we can access the island,” Ryan said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis directed transportation authorities to prioritize repairs to the Sanibel Causeway, which was damaged at multiple points during the storm.
“Access to our barrier islands is a priority for our first responders and emergency services who have been working around the clock to provide aid to all Floridians affected by Hurricane Ian,” the governor said in a statement.
Aerial photo of the Sanibel Causeway, a road that connects Fort Myers with the island community.
Schools closed and hospitals without water or electricity
Days following the hurricane hit, as decimated homes line the streets, residents continue to deal with the losses.
As of Tuesday, at least 109 people had died from the hurricane in the United States, with 105 of those deaths in Florida.
It is unclear how many people are still missing. Florida officials are working to consolidate a list of people who are still missing, Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said Monday.
So far, more than 2,300 rescues have been carried out statewide, DeSantis said during a news conference Tuesday. More than 1,000 urban search and rescue personnel have searched 79,000 structures in Florida.
As search and rescue efforts continue, many residents still don’t know anything.
More than 330,000 customers in Florida were still without power as of early Wednesday, according to PowerOutage.us. Many of the outages are in the hardest-hit Lee and Charlotte counties.
In Charlotte County, north of Fort Myers, public schools will remain closed until further notice following several of its 22 schools were damaged by Hurricane Ian.
“The storm lasted here for over 12 hours, just whipping around. Nothing is safe right now,” Charlotte County Public Schools spokesman Mike Riley said.
Florida hospitals have also had problems. Emergency departments suffered damage, staffing suffered as many hospital workers were displaced or lost their vehicles, and some facilities lost reliable access to water.
In this aerial view, a crew works to repair the road leading to Pine Island on Tuesday.
“We were ready, we had our generators ready. We had a lot of fuel. What we mightn’t and didn’t anticipate was the loss of water from our utilities,” said Dr. Larry Antonucci, President and CEO of Lee Health.
Many areas remain under boil water advisories since the storm made landfall, damaging critical infrastructure as well as homes.
Residents of Lee and Charlotte counties, the two counties with the highest death toll from the hurricane, will be able to get temporary blue covering with fiber-reinforced sheeting for their roofs to help reduce further damage, according to a statement from Charlotte County. Charlotte.
Meanwhile, in Naples, hundreds of residents may not be able to return to their homes for a period of time, City Manager Jay Boodheshwar told CNN.
“There was a significant number of houses, in fact, an entire neighborhood was submerged with at least three feet of water. Some areas have six to seven feet of water,” Boodheshwar said. “I would guess that there are probably hundreds of households that will experience a period of time where they will not be able to be in their homes.”
Members of the Miami-Dade Task Force 1 search and rescue team search for victims in a pile of debris Tuesday in Matlacha, Florida.
A family remembers the man who died during the hurricane for his generosity
As rescue teams continue to sift through the rubble for signs of life, some families learn their loved ones did not survive.
Stacy Verdream told CNN she learned that her “funny, goofy, very smart” uncle, Mike Verdream, was among Ian’s victims.
Mike Verdream decided to ride out the hurricane in Matlacha and planned to go to his boss’s two-story house if things got worse, his niece told CNN.
Stacy Verdream said her cousin spoke to him on Wednesday, the day the hurricane made landfall, and he said the water was 4 feet (120 centimeters) deep before telling her she had to go.
“It was a very short call because he said he was very scared and she had never heard him like that, because he was not that kind of person. He has always put on a brave face,” said Stacy Verdream. “But she said that she sounded absolutely terrified.”
On Friday, the family was told the uncle survived the storm and was helping people, Verdream said. They were told that he mightn’t call because his phone had gotten wet.
Her niece said that made sense, at first, because her uncle was “very generous.”
Mike Verdream is one of the victims of Hurricane Ian, his family said.
“He would give you the shirt he was wearing, the last penny he had if someone needed it,” Stacy Verdream said. “Always worried regarding helping other people and not himself.”
As time went on, they worried that he hadn’t borrowed someone’s phone or found another way to communicate.
On Monday, the sheriff’s office informed the family that Verdream had died. His body had been found in a canal on Friday, he said.
Authorities had to use medical records to identify her uncle because his face was unrecognizable, Stacy Verdream said.
“He was always there for me growing up, teaching me how to drive and taking me to the fair,” she said. “The cool guy who would buy me like a dirt bike and bought the jet ski for us to go out on the lake with. He just he loved us to death.”
CNN’s Amy Simonson, Amanda Musa, Leyla Santiago, Melissa Alonso, Naomi Thomas and David Williams contributed to this report.