Downtown Fort Myers Business Overcomes Ian Recovery Obstacles

downtown fort myers

These are tough times for popular spots where you can get anything from pizza slices to scoops of ice cream and even cigars.

Hurricane Ian undoubtedly caused damage to downtown Fort Myers.

However, local businesses are wasting no time in recovery efforts.

As Southwest Florida rebuilds, contractors and construction workers are working around the clock to help businesses return to their former locations.

Devin Johnson is one of them, a project manager for flood zone disaster recovery services.

Wednesday he was at the First Street Restaurant and Bar.

“The restaurants and bars on First Street and all the other businesses here on First Street were flooded by the hurricane. I had to,” Johnson said. “This Category 3 water brings a lot of other things.

Johnson’s work will be completed on Wednesday, but he said work to repair all damage from Ian will not be done for some time.

“Each project is a very short amount of time to be honest about its restoration work. Get in, clean up, and dry quickly. increase. “So we have other problems. When water accumulates inside buildings, it becomes more and more damaging.”

Johnson told WINK News that the biggest obstacle to rebuilding and cleaning the building will be content storage. This is because Ian is only two weeks old, and that storage is hard to come by.

“Of course, to deal with the inside of a construction site, all the equipment has to be taken out, and the materials, all of them, have to be cleaned before they’re put back in,” Johnson said.

If that’s not enough, there are more.

“There may be supply chain issues. It may affect people for a while, but I hope everyone can get back to normal as soon as possible,” Johnson said.