Southwest Florida

Speaking in Lee County, DeSantis also announced more funds for hurricane recovery while citing red tape in the need to get more temporary shelters to residents in Southwest Florida.

It aimed to come up with a consensus for developing a strategy to deal with warming temperatures and catastrophic weather events, like Hurricane Ian.

Hurricane Ian trampled over 5 million acres of agricultural land in Florida. For small, family farmers, the recovery is a long season, a brutal winter, fruitless.

FEMA, SBA and city officials met with Fort Myers Beach residents who are struggling to navigate the rebuilding process.

Some shops and restaurants have cleaned up and reopened, but others along the beaches will take longer to rebuild and open again.

Some charitable groups are getting donations for Thanksgiving meal giveaways in the middle of recovery from Hurricane Ian devastation.

Florida is among 32 states that don’t treat 911 dispatchers as first responders. Recent efforts in the state Legislature to change that have not advanced.

Hurricane Ian’s devastation on the Southwest Florida coast sent a chill up the spine of anyone in Miami worried about the next big one — and it sharpened the focus of federal planners working to design and build new barriers to avoid a similar outcome for Miami-Dade.

Southwest Florida has already answered the immediate question after Hurricane Ian slammed into the coast, killing dozens of people and destroying thousands of homes with record-high storm surge: Will we rebuild?

Contractors who clean up debris and perform other services already are fighting over local government contracts that could be worth tens of millions in tax dollars.

Students returning to school have lost out on weeks of instruction, putting them behind on the year’s planned curriculum. But more serious, say some experts, are long-term effects on a student’s physical and emotional health.

The Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund provides relatively inexpensive reinsurance to carriers as a way to help stabilize the property-insurance market.