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'My House is Gone!': Debris and Cars Float in Floodwaters as Hurricane Ian Hits Fort Myers

Hurricane Ian battered Fort Myers Beach, Florida, bringing flooding, heavy rain, and strong winds to the area on September 28.

Footage captured by Instagram user malsmarie shows cars and debris from destroyed buildings floating in flood waters, as wild winds continued to batter the area. The camera is then turned around, and pointed towards a pile of debris not far away, as a voice says, “That was a house. My house is gone.”

The City of Fort Myers issued an emergency citywide 48-hour curfew for residents, visitors, and first responders.

The National Hurricane Center said Ian made landfall at Cayo Costa on Wednesday afternoon as an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph.x Credit: @malsmarie via Storyful

Video Transcript

[WIND]

- [INAUDIBLE] Oh. We get the t-shirts.

- So that's my grandparents' house, that one right there on the ground. I can't see anything through that window. This is, we don't know whose car most of these are.

- [INAUDIBLE]

- The water is still up, but it's going down. This is a house from across the street at the beach.

- It's so bad.

- There used to be a tree right there.

- So we called everybody, called 911, call the Coast Guard, [INAUDIBLE].

- Take y'all to the backyard.

- All we smell is [INAUDIBLE] gas.

- First, we'll go over here. This is all gone all the way back. There's still standing water. This was my grandma's house, it's not really anymore. Let's go to the backyard.

- Do you know what I did with my little flashlight?

- We set up all of this to get to higher ground, but, obviously, thank god we didn't have to do that. So this is our back porch right now. Just going to come out here and show you the back yard. Somebody's RV came in our backyard. That's our pool. That's our deck. That was my house. My house is gone.

So for everyone wondering, it's not livable. We're out of the life-threatening danger right now. For a second there, we all ended up just hugging each other and crying. And if you know my dad, then you know that that was scary because he never shows emotions.

But, yeah, I mean, inside upstairs is the wind because we have the doors open kind of messing everything up. But we're all just hanging out in my parents' bedroom watching it, watching from the window. I guess you can see.

- Non-stop.

- So--

- But the water was going down.

- --I will update you guys because high tide just hit. So it may raise again. I don't know. We will see.

- The water has receded, but [INAUDIBLE].

- But as of right now, we're safe and we're OK. Thank you everyone who's been like texting and asking for updates and praying for us. We definitely felt it.

- Like there's