Florida Hurricane Ian Relief

October 2022 – September 2024
Last updated: October 2024

All Hands and Hearts (AHAH) was in Florida for two years, responding to the devastating impacts of 2022’s Hurricane Ian. Utilizing our volunteer-powered disaster relief model, we impacted 1,644 people affected by the hurricane in and around the Fort Myers area. We are committed to supporting communities like Fort Myers for the long term after disastrous storms, knowing that recovery without the right resources can take years.

Our Work

After the program’s launch in October 2022, AHAH conducted various scopes of disaster relief work in Fort Myers and surrounding Lee County, which suffered massive damage to homes and infrastructure in the hurricane. Throughout our two years of operation, our goal was to get vulnerable community members back into safe, secure and functional homes.

The impact of this work extended beyond physical improvements. For the families and individuals assisted, each property cleared, each home stripped of muck and mold or repaired provides a foundation for renewed hope. Together, the households assisted contribute to a stronger, revitalized community.

Current Activities

At the end of September, we commemorated the two-year anniversary of the storm and prepared to complete our on-the-ground presence in Fort Myers and Lee County. While finalizing outstanding home repairs, paperwork and inventorying tools for donation to local partners, our team in Fort Myers was quickly called to respond to another devastating storm, Hurricane Helene, striking in the same region.

Throughout the month, we continued our partnership with local food bank Gladiolus Food Pantry through to the end of the program, serving community members’ essential needs weekly by cleaning, stocking and sorting food for distribution.

We also finished our work under a grant from the Red Cross, originally intended to restore 15 homes damaged by Hurricane Ian, but was later expanded to 25. We’re proud to announce that by the end of our program, we completed 40 homes!

Disaster Profile

Hurricane Ian started as a tropical depression on September 24, 2022, and underwent a rapid intensification, making its first landfall in Cuba as a category 3 hurricane. After intensifying to a category 4 hurricane, it made a second landfall on the west coast of Florida near Fort Myers on September 28, causing devastating impacts to coastal cities and towns along with catastrophic flooding further inland. Ian’s 150 mph winds, storm surge and rainfall caused power outages across the state, damaged infrastructure and overturned cars and boats. After slowly crossing central Florida, the storm exited at Daytona Beach and made another landfall in South Carolina as a category 1 storm.

Ian ties seven other storms as the fifth strongest to make landfall in the United States. Its wind speed was shy of a category 5 hurricane with sustained winds of 157 mph. At landfall, there was at least a 12-foot storm surge in the Fort Myers area, destroying homes and causing extensive flooding.