If you want to go to SW Florida and volunteer with the recovery efforts, you may be pleased to learn that the Naples airport reopened yesterday (only from 7 am to 7:30 pm due to damage sustained by lighting). The airport reopened with PPR on Friday, just two days after Hurricane Ian made landfall, complete with control tower.
A friend lives in an oceanfront condo in Naples. I checked in with her today. Consistent with Vice President Kamala Harris’s point that “communities of color” were “most impacted” by Hurricane Ian, houses and buildings close to the water in Naples were flooded. My friend’s building has a sacrificial ground level lobby and it was dramatically sacrificed, complete with car pushed into the lobby:
Car dealers became billionaires thanks to coronapanic. Will they get an extra few $billion in profit in Florida given that cars have been destroyed during a moment when each new car is sold for $6,000 or $15,000 in profit? (the MSRP-invoice spread plus the market adjustment markup)
My friend evacuated to a house that is 2 miles inland. Neither her condo nor the evacuation destination were damaged, but neither has power or Internet. One guy actually elected to stay in the condo building, despite the mandatory evacuation order, and came through the storm without injury. Restaurants and supermarkets are open.
“Photos show Fifth Avenue South damage after Hurricane Ian swept through Naples, Florida” (Naples News, 9/30) shows that even a single step of elevation was sufficient, in some cases, to keep a store from being flooded.
If you get hungry while you’re in Naples, the Supermarket of the Deplorables reopened just one day after the storm, 9/29. Here are some November 2021 photos from Seed to Table:
The Google says that it is less than a one-hour drive from the Naples Airport to downtown Fort Myers, which is near where the hardest-hit communities of color on barriers islands are (Sanibel, Captiva, and Fort Myers Beach).
How’s Team DeSantis doing with the overall recovery effort? Here’s today’s New York Times:
The top stories are the horrors likely to be visited on the nation by improperly appointed Supreme Court justices, “relatable lesbian content”, a soccer stampede in which more people died than were killed by Hurricane Ian, and journalist Ezra Klein’s dream that someone other than himself be stuck with the bill for our enormous government (“a tax that could help with inflation” that will fall on “the rich”).
Nothing about the Tyrant of Tallahassee or the situation in Florida after what the same newspaper previously characterized as a catastrophe. Should we infer that Ron DeSantis therefore has not made any missteps?
Update, 8:30 pm: the New York Times front page now has an article about Florida, but it is about migrants being welcomed in Maskachusetts (top left), not about the recent Category 4 hurricane or Ron DeSantis’s restoration effort. Also… bean soup.
Related:
- https://poweroutage.us/area/state/florida (about 800,000 customers still without power, down from 2.7 million on Thursday)
@philg inre: Related –> After being ravaged by the wrath of Ian’s remnants, there are also 16,600 people still without power in North Carolina, or approximately 0.33% of the population. Far-inland Stokes County is faring the worst but the coast (including the Outer Banks) is clear, as it were. I assume (but haven’t checked) that the Wright Brothers Memorial is still standing.
https://poweroutage.us/area/state/north%20carolina
I guess it is too early for the NYT to start reporting on the financial woes that will ensue from the insurers and residents failing to make payments on mortgages for houses that are “clearly underwater”. Not to mention the number of cars that will “Flood” the used car market. Reminder to those thinking they are getting a deal on a Rolls Royce from Naples heed what occurred in Texas!
https://www.tdi.texas.gov/news/2021/tdi06212021.html#:~:text=A%20month%20after%20flooding%20in,resell%20them%20to%20unsuspecting%20buyers.
I have found myself using YouTube to get more news about the impact in Florida as it is clear that mainstream media won’t pay attention.
Speaking of paying attention, I found a number of private aviation companies that were in and out of KSUA. Perhaps they are checking on their properties since they could not get news coverage or just a coincidence?
PAPA HOTEL INVESTMENTS ADSB EXCHANGE IMAGE OF BELL 407: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1w2JBsGz-L0sLnqByUewDyCe-VQwV3Wdn/view?usp=sharing
SMITH LUXURY VILLAS ADSB EXCHANGE IMAGE OF HONDA JET: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LfZjxPs1D5FeiBjTnN2YkFfHyg9hDIvd/view?usp=sharing
@JJD: > Not to mention the number of cars that will “Flood” the used car market….
+1. I don’t know how they do it in ‘florda, but here in MA after the big rains that flooded the NY/NJ/CT area earlier this year, a bunch of cars, minivans and trucks wound up being “laundered” through auctions in places like Rhode Island and showed up on used car lots in MA with replacement titles and low prices on the windshields. Unless you are your own mechanic (and a good one) don’t fall for it.
One of my favorite YouTubers showing why you *always* get an independent inspection when buying a used vehicle. This wasn’t a flood truck, but maybe it’s even worse.
Unfortunately there are a lot of people who need a good, used vehicle and they do fall for it. I’m unfamiliar with Florida’s vehicle consumer protection and “lemon” laws. Caveat Emptor.
@Alex
Thanks for the follow up and additional YouTube content. I do enjoy car content (but not more than aviation content) and will check out the review.
Speaking of “new” versus “used” vehicles, I wonder if they same people that buy new cars, demand “new” toilet seats when they move or is that just for the “used” market?
JJD – Recently replaced his..
@JJD: I don’t know about the toilet seats, but over the years I’ve bought some really awesome used cars, and a couple of really terrible ones. “In these times” as they say, I think FTMs advice is sound, and unlike a lot of YouTubers, he’s really tries to help people with his channel, not screw them over. That F150 is a real mess and the video is only 10 minutes long. It’s probably going to cost more to fix it safely than the new owner paid for it (which was quite a bit!) If you’re really interested in a used vehicle and the seller bails when you ask to have an independent inspection done – even if you pay for it – run away and don’t look back.
Now that I think about it a little more, the 2021-2022 inflation in building supplies and costs is also going to drive the cost of this hurricane. It would have been a lot cheaper to fix houses pre-Biden.
My favorite this week in the NYT is their Op-Ed regarding the Supreme Court. Among many other fascinating misconstructions, they claim that John Roberts was wrong when he said: “Simply because people disagree with an opinion is not a basis for criticizing the legitimacy of the court,” he said in remarks at a judicial conference earlier in September.”
I happen to think that’s true, and under more “liberal” compositions of the Court, I’ve said the same thing to people who disagreed with how their decisions were made.
They say he’s wrong. Actually, the term they use is “disingenuous” – just this side of “that was a lie.” Of course, they don’t mention all of the millions of words that have been written about how John Roberts has “lost control” of the Court, mostly written by liberals, without ever asking themselves whether “controlling the Court” is actually *not* his job. Nor do they mention the fact that the Chief Justice himself is *hardly* a Conservative hero – many Conservatives I know consider him to be just this side of a traitor!
In any case, throughout the rest of the piece, they proceed to do exactly what he describes, indirectly proving that he was correct. It’s a mind-blower. I haven’t heard anything like it except for the stories of the people who drive the wrong way down highways with BACs of 0.25, smash into other people, and then try to avoid the field sobriety test: “I had, liiiike, two beeeeerrs, offissscccher.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/01/opinion/supreme-court-legitimacy.html