Ed Ryan says Fort Myers Beach ‘will never be the same’ as Hurricane Ian’s two year anniversary nears

FORT MYERS, Fla. – As the two year anniversary of Hurricane Ian approaches, Ed Ryan of Beach Talk Radio shared some optimism about the reconstruction of Fort Myers Beach, but said it’s “never going back to the way it was.”

“There are people down there that wish it could go back to the way it was, but they’ve come to realize it’s never going back to the way it was,” Ryan said on Florida’s Voice Radio with Drew Steele Tuesday. “Because the buildings, some of the buildings, were so old, it didn’t take a category five hurricane to knock them down. They can never be rebuilt.”

Ryan pointed to the area of Times Square in Fort Myers Beach as an example. He said if that area ever gets rebuilt, it will be “completely different.”

“Everything has to be built higher and stronger in certain areas, in certain zones on Fort Myers Beach. So there are people that were saying we wanted to go back to the way it was, but they’ve all come to the reality,” Ryan said.

Ryan said if you drive through the side streets on Fort Myers Beach, the “beachy vibe thing exists” still.

“They can’t rebuild back some of the cottages because they were wiped away, but they can lift some of the cottages so they can be a little bit higher and withstand a storm or be built to the current codes which they need to be,” Ryan said.

Hurricane Ian, the catastrophic Category 5 storm, made landfall Sep. 28, 2022.