WAUCHULA, Fla. — A pile of seat cushions arranged as a makeshift mattress on a tile floor.
That’s just one of the vivid memories Ashleigh Lund and her family still share after the horrifying night of Sept. 28, 2022, when Hurricane Ian carved its way through Hardee County.
“The wind was awful,” Lund remembered. “I get the shakes. Like, I can’t — I can’t describe it any other way. It was awful.”
On that fateful night, Lund sheltered in place at her Wauchula apartment along with her husband and four young children.
Everything changed, however, when the wind from Ian tore up the apartment’s roof. Ceiling tiles began falling one by one, which sent inches of water into the apartment and business below it.
“I remember there was a 10-gallon trash can sitting on the counter, and it was pouring in — just overflowing onto the desk, onto the floor,” Lund said. “When the really bad bands and the gusts would come through, the house would shake left to right — you could feel it swaying in the breeze.”
Their apartment was no longer safe, so they awoke their kids and quickly but carefully escorted them to a nearby community theater, where Lund has directed and starred in several plays.
“We love the theater so much. We slept there,” she smiled.
It’s there where she and her husband arranged the seat cushions on the tile floor to provide their children and them a bit of comfort in the middle of chaos.
“It felt like days, but it was just hours," she said.
Lund recalls those memories as if they happened yesterday. And for Lund and others in Hardee County, it’s hard not to remember Ian one year later.
All around the community are signs of the storm’s fury and the historic flooding it caused along the Peace River. A typically tranquil river became a devastating and deadly torrent. Bridges were washed out. Cars were swept into cow pastures. Homes became islands surrounded by blackwater.
When the water receded days later, the smell of mildew was omnipresent.
“There are still so many people where they still have drywall that needs to be taken out, and they still have flooring that needs to be ripped up, and they still need stuff painted, and they still need new homes,” Lund said.
Thursday night, a year after hunkering down on the theater’s floor with her family, Lund attended an event at the Hardee County Civic Center commemorating the storm’s anniversary.
The event provided people impacted by the storm a free meal and showed them what help is still out there as some continue to wait for financial aid, home repairs, or a new permanent home — and cope with the stress and anxiety Ian has caused.
“Insurance is, you know, a process,” said Sheriff Vent Crawford. “And FEMA is a process. Help is out there, but patience is a virtue in this type of situation.”
According to the nonprofit SendMeMissions, which has tirelessly helped people in Hardee County since Ian, 200 households still need help across the county.
But the Thursday night was not about rekindling despair. Instead, its main purpose was to celebrate a community that remains strongly together despite all it’s been through over the past year.
“For me, it’s about showing my kids — that’s one of the reasons why we came — showing my kids that we’re resilient, and it’s okay to mourn, and it’s okay to be sad, but also look at how far we’ve come,” Lund said.
