 |
| Photo Credit: AP. |
FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) — With her home gone and all her belongings trashed by Hurricane Ian, Alice Pujols wept as she picked through soggy clothes, toys and overturned furniture piled head-high outside a stranger’s house, looking to salvage something — anything — for her four children and herself.
“I’m trying
to make it to the next day,” she said. “That’s all I can do. It’s really
depressing. It really is.”
For those
who lost everything to a natural disaster and even those spared, the anguish
can be crushing to return home to find so much gone. Grief can run the gamut
from frequent tears to utter despair. Two men in their 70s even took their own
lives after viewing their losses, said the medical examiner in Lee County,
where Ian first made landfall in southwestern Florida.
The
emotional toll in the days, weeks and months after a hurricane, flood or
wildfire can be crippling. More pressing needs for food, shelter and clothing
often take priority to seeking counseling, which is in short supply even in
good times.
“When someone’s in a state of trauma that so
many are in, they don’t know where to begin,” said Beth Hatch, CEO of the
Collier County, Florida, branch of the National Alliance of Mental Illness.
“They need that hand-holding and they need to know that there’s so many people
here to help them.”
Hurricane
Ian hammered Florida with such ferocity that it wiped out whole neighborhoods,
tossed boats onto highways, swept away beaches and swamped homes in roof-deep
waters.
With
sustained winds of 150 mph (240 kph), it was one of the strongest hurricanes to
ever hit southwest Florida. It later cut a watery and wind-battered swath
across the Florida peninsula before turning out to sea to regain strength and
pummel South Carolina.
It killed
more than 100 people, the majority of victims in Florida, making it the
third-deadliest storm to hit the U.S. mainland this century. Even a week after
it passed through, officials warned that more victims could yet be found as
they continued to inspect the damage. The storm knocked out power to 2.6
million and caused billions of dollars in damage.
Research has
shown that between a third and half of those who survive a disaster develop
some type of mental distress, said Jennifer Horney, an epidemiology professor
at the University of Delaware who studies natural disaster impacts on public
health.
Post-traumatic
stress disorder, depression and anxiety rise along with substance abuse. Those
with existing mental disorders are at greater risk of having those conditions
exacerbated by the trauma.
A variety of
help is available as additional resources are sent to the area.
The state of
Florida was setting up support centers and the federal government has a 24-hour
disaster distress helpline to provide counseling and crisis support. Hatch’s
organization was going to some homes in hard-hit areas to check on clients with
mental illness.
The vast
majority of people, though, were still assessing damage, trying to retrieve and
dry out possessions worth keeping and drag what couldn’t be saved to growing
trash heaps by the side of the road.
On Pine
Island, just off the Florida mainland where Ian first struck, an emotional Alan
Bickford said he was trying to take a longer view because what lay before him
was bleak: the floors of his home were coated in stinky muck and his yard was
littered with framed photos, furniture and other items he’d hauled outside.
“It’s like a
death of a loved one. The pain just comes and goes,” he said. “There’s times
when there are these little glimmers or slivers of hope. And then everything
falls apart.”
Riding out a
deadly storm amid screaming winds, pounding waves and rising waters, or
escaping as danger closes in is terrifying and traumatic. Living out of a
duffel bag or suitcase in an evacuation center is disruptive, stressful and
depressing. Returning to a flood-ravaged home that needs to be gutted to
prevent mold from taking hold or, worse, reduced to splinters and scrap metal
and scattered like confetti is heartbreaking.
Mao Lin
walked an hour Thursday to reach the plot of land where she had lived on Fort
Myers Beach, which looked like a blast zone. She was distressed to find it
gone.
“The whole
street — nothing’s left,” she said. “We don’t have a home. We don’t have a car.
We don’t have anything. We have nothing left.”
In recent
days, the number of calls have doubled at Hatch’s organization as people
recognize they cannot rebuild their lives — and overcome trauma — alone.
“The needs
are going to change over time,” Hatch said. “Some people have lost everything,
maybe the walls of their home may be still standing, but they’re
uninhabitable.”
Cleaning up
the mess of a damaged home or finding a new one in the wake of a catastrophe
gives way to the longer term challenges of navigating the maze of bureaucracy
for financial assistance, securing permits for rebuilding or fighting insurance
companies over reimbursements.
Horney
studied suicide rates in counties that experienced a disaster between
2003-2015. She and her colleagues found suicides increased 23% when comparing
the three-year period preceding a disaster to the three years after an event,
according to the study published in The Journal of Crisis Intervention and
Suicide Prevention.
She said the
Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 suicides of men in their 70s was not typical so soon after
a catastrophic event.
“It’s not
usually an immediate, post-disaster thing,” Horney said. “It’s really these
longer-term mental health problems that have either been exacerbated by or
caused by the disaster that then over time tend to lead to more severe outcomes
like suicide.”
In the
aftermath of a disaster, communities pull together to recover and rebuild.
Rescuers, relief workers and nonprofit organizations provide food, funding and
other help, including counseling. But attention eventually fades and the money
dries up. Emergency funds for mental health sometimes expire in as soon as two
months and last no longer than a year.
With
disasters becoming more frequent and more severe due to climate change, there
could be a cumulative effect on mental health, Horney said. She said her study
calls for more funding to fix the damage that is felt but can’t be seen.
Most of the
emotional impacts of a disaster are short-lived but they could be worsened if
followed by another cataclysmic event.
“If it was
usual that symptoms would resolve in six months to a year, but then there’s
another hurricane or another wildfire, then you’re in this cycle of
intensifying mental health impacts,” Horney said. “The research is definitely
clear that the more disasters you’re exposed to, the stronger the impacts on
mental health.”
Joe Kuczko
hunkered down with his parents as their Pine Island mobile home was battered by
the storm. Kuczko got a gash in his foot that he stitched himself after a piece
of the roof blew off.
Pieces of
mangled metal lay on the ground Thursday along with containers full of possessions
and clothes hung to dry as Kuczko, shirtless and with a sunburn on his back,
strung up a tarp to keep the rain out of what remained of the home.
“I lost the
first 30 years of my life,” he said. “Every time I hear the wind blow and a
piece of aluminum shift, it’s like PTSD.”
Melley
reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press journalist Robert Bumsted
contributed to this story from Pine Island, Florida.
The National
Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available for those in distress by dialing 988
or 1-800-273-8255.