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Southwest Florida residents are continuing to clean up after the catastrophic mess caused by Hurricane Ian’s winds and storm surge this week, including the Bonita Springs area.

Bonita Beach Road is surrounded on both sides by bay water and is just a few blocks from the Gulf of Mexico. On that street on the way to Barefoot Beach, bewildered residents stuck their phones out the windows of their slow-moving cars to record the various boats strewn on either side of the street, scattered like discarded soda cans.

Most of them were probably owned by Omar Botana, owner of Bay Water Boat Club and Rentals for 18 years.

About 50 of his ships were swept away by Hurricane Ian’s storm surge.

“This is my sixth hurricane, but this was really one of the worst,” he said.

Botana estimated that about 85% of his boats scattered in all directions would be salvageable because of the speed of the storm surge, which he said helped keep them intact.

A pontoon boat stuck on the sidewalk by the street is grabbed from above with a mechanical pull system by two men in blue shirts. The owner stands in front of the boat wearing a white shirt, khaki pants, a blue hat and sunglasses.

Jessica Meszaros

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WUSF public media

About 50 of the 80 rental boats owned by Omar Botana (white shirt) were scattered on Bonita Beach Road after Hurricane Ian’s storm surge caused them to travel in random directions.

“When it goes slow, the damage is the worst,” Botana said. “So many neighbor boats ended up three blocks away [up] here, and some of me ended up [up] over there. But it was so much water, so fast they floated.”

The boat found furthest from Botana’s company was about a quarter of a mile away, but he remained optimistic.

“Boats can be replaced, but lives can’t. So it’s sad to see, but we’ll be back to work. It’s just a matter of time,” Botana said.

Just a few blocks east on Bonita Beach Road is Jason Crosser’s classic video game store called 8-Bit Hall of Fame, or what’s left of it. Crosser sat in a chair just outside his shell of a shop, looking defeated, among large shards of broken glass, video game cabinets and gray mud.

“I don’t even know why…I came back today because everything was thrown out, but I just didn’t want to sit around and do nothing in my house,” Crosser said.

He started this company nine years ago with his own personal collection, but thanks to the support of the local gaming community, it became a success… until Ian.

A man with short brown hair wears a white shirt with a blue-yellow race car on it and khaki shorts. He looks sadly into the distance, sitting on a chair just outside his ruined shop. Around his feet are mud, video game consultants and video games.

Jessica Meszaros

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WUSF public media

Jason Crosser owned the 8-Bit Hall of Fame in Bonita Springs for nine years, until Hurricane Ian swept through it, cleaning up his classic video game inventory.

“Everything I made of it I just brought back into the store over the years and built it and built it and… the building was flooded and then nine-tenths of it floated away,” he said. .

He owned more than $2 million worth of video games from the 1970s to the PS-5, and only a tenth of that was insured.

“It comes and goes and touches me,” Crosser said. “I taught history before I opened the store and I’m from Iowa so I think I’ll go back to Iowa for a few years and teach and just watch and build some money and then maybe open another one, but I don’t know Where.”

Some of Crosser’s classic games were found a mile away, but they were destroyed by salt water or crushed by passing cars.

Sarah Simon, who was cycling along Bonita Beach Road to take a break from cleaning up the flood damage at her home in Bonita Shores, won’t let this storm push her out of Florida. She just moved there five months ago with her daughter from California.

Woman with short blond hair in a gray, white and black dress riding a purple cruiser bike through rubble-filled streets.

Jessica Meszaros

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WUSF public media

Sarah Simon said her house in Bonita Shores had about two feet of water outside and in the garage, and about one foot of water in the house she recently bought five months ago.

“I loved it when we came here – I still love it, but we’re just so sad to see the devastation or we’re heartbroken for the people and the losses and the beauty that’s in ruins now,” said Simon , adding that she is concerned about how demand for contractors in the area will slow their recovery.

At the corner of Bonita Beach Road and Hickory Boulevard, Steven Blumrosen examined the damage to Barefoot Beach for the first time since he and about 15 other people were evacuated from his apartment in Bonita Springs in his RV to a rest area off I-75.

“The beach is supposed to be on the beach. And here it is in the middle of the street. I don’t know what to expect as I move forward. It’s two miles from my house,” Blumrosen said.

Law enforcement officers blocked the road for cars and only residents with proper identification were able to walk along Barefoot Beach. From that vantage point you could see a pile of rubble that used to be the home of the locally famous meeting place and restaurant Doc’s Beach House.

Man in a blue collared shirt and black trousers standing in the middle of a sandy street with mounds of sand as high as cars behind him clogging Bonita Beach Road.

Jessica Meszaros

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WUSF public media

Since returning to Bonita Springs from his evacuation, Steven Blumrosen has seen a car smashed into a railing, boats on the street instead of in the water, and chunks of cement falling from buildings. “I had expectations of destruction and they are being delivered,” he said.

WUSF couldn’t get close enough to Doc’s to check and the phone number no longer works, but locals speculated it probably needs rebuilding.

Blumrosen said that when his father was alive, he and his family regularly walked from their apartment to Doc’s.

“I’m devastated,” Blumrosen said. “I felt like I had the shock people have in wartime when they have to go through things they’re not used to.”