SARASOTA, Fla. — First responders in Sarasota, many of them also impacted, are getting praise from their leaders for their response to Hurricane Ian.
It's exactly a month since Ian tore through Southwest Florida and left many communities in places like Lee, Charlotte, and Sarasota counties unrecognizable.
Clean-up and recovery efforts are expected to continue over several months. Sarasota County Emergency Services officials provided updates on the process so far.
They said their teams were able to quickly pivot from disaster response mode to recovery operations because of proper planning and preparation.
"I am extremely humbled by the amount of work done by this team," Richard Collins, the Sarasota County Director of Emergency Services, said.
First Responders with Sarasota's Emergency Services jumped into action in the days leading up to Hurricane Ian's arrival on Wednesday, Sept. 28, as well as after.
"We announced our evacuations on Monday and starting Tuesday we opened up all of our shelters at the same time," Collins said.
"We used programs we developed to transport people from various locations to shelters if needed," he added. "We opened up medically dependent shelters in and through all of that. All of our employees moved into those various roles to take care of our community and I will tell you that they did a phenomenal job of working to take care of our community."
The storm came packing Category 4 winds that topped 150 mph and left streets littered with downed trees and power poles.
The hurricane destroyed many homes and left many others roofless
"We had trucks out on the road picking up debris within the week of the storm and have picked out over 1.2 million yards of debris," Collins said.
According to county officials, that amount of vegetative debris collected is equivalent to 10 years worth of normal vegetation disposal and enough to fill more than 322 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
The vegetation has been taken to the central landfill where it is being transformed into mulch.
"Our contractors will actually be taking that out and repurposing it for agricultural use and compost and things like that so it will not impact the capacity at our central county landfill," Sarasota Solid Waste Coordinator Wendi Crisp said.
Officials said working hand-in-hand with partners from faith-based communities like the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and multiple community organizations as well as state and federal agencies has helped them take care of and keep the community safe.
County leaders are in the process of starting to review the execution of their plans and look toward improvements.
"Our plans worked, how we move people, or are we going to go back and take a look at that? It could be that we tweak some things to make it a little bit better," Collins said. "Could we do some things that would make the process a little bit better."
Various teams are conducting what's being called an "After Action Review" for which they would document areas where lapses occurred and those that need enhancement.
The county has put residential damage estimates at approximately $135 million so far and warned about unscrupulous individuals. Some people have posed as non-profit volunteers asking for donations or contractors looking to make repairs but instead ask for money upfront and disappear.
Officials also say the 311 Contact Center has answered more than 25,000 calls and connected community members with valuable resources. Between 3,500 and 4,000 phone calls came in from North Port during the time their contact center was out of service.
If residents still need help with crisis cleanup, the deadline is Nov. 4. They can call the Crisis Hotline at 311 to get on the list.
In the meantime, storm-related demolition and construction debris collection begins the first week of November.
"It's going to take a while to get things back to normal and further south it's going take longer than here," Collins said.