After Hurricane Ian, a low-lying Florida city starts to rebuild. Should it?
In Florida it’s easy to become discouraged with progress, even the most promising progress. People here feel like their lives can be improved and that no matter what they are doing, that improvement could be better. Many people who work in cities believe that progress can be made in a city without the support of city government, while at the same time, people who grew up in a rural area assume that city government is everything and the town is everything and should be left alone.
So, the city of Sanford, a city of 100,000, doesn’t have to be like it was.
When Hurricane Ian struck on Sunday, September 1, 2015, it was the third time that the city had experienced the devastating force of a Category Four hurricane here in Florida, the first two times in 1998 and 1999. That’s three. All it took was one. And if that happened a third time, the city would probably be left in ruins.
Hurricanes are terrifying, but it’s easy to get used to them as we continue to live with them. Most of the time our lives go on and we don’t feel much impact.
We have to remember that the last time we were this devastated, we weren’t so lucky.
The town has been rebuilding. It’s hard rebuilding any community from a disaster. It takes years. And it takes a lot of effort.
But at the same time, it’s understandable why you wouldn’t want to live in a place where the things that used to be there, and that you loved, are gone. It’s just the way life goes.
After Ian, the entire town begins to rebuild.
But the city is in disarray. It seems like it might never be the same.
The problem is, the most important things — the things that make up the very foundation of the city — have changed. The infrastructure of the city has changed. And people have changed, and the city is no longer the home it was.
It seems like it might never be the same.
In the beginning, when people started settling in the town, there was a lot of excitement there. The town was starting to grow. And as the community grew, a lot of people started coming in and