Although parts of Bonita Springs re-mained flooded Tuesday — more than aweek after Hurricane Irma roared acrossSouthwest Florida — some of the city’svenerable institutions weathered thestorm.

The Shangri-La Springs, a historic re-sort constructed in 1921, sustained “zerodamage” to its building in downtown Bon-ita Springs, said General Manager LeeBellamy, and the property’s two 80-year-old Mysore fig trees will pull through, too.

Bonita landmarks weathered IrmaFEMA town hall meeting When: 6 p.m. Friday

Where: First Presbyterian Church, 9751Bonita Beach Road

What: FEMA representatives will be atthe meeting to discuss FEMA eligibilityand answer questions.

Needed to apply for FEMA aid:Social Security number, daytimetelephone number, current mailingaddress, address and ZIP code of thedamaged property, and privateinsurance information if available.

Applicants can pre-register online atwww.DisasterAssistance.gov or bycalling 1-800-621-FEMA (3362).

Historic resort, longtimerestaurant just cleaning up

TheShangri-LaSprings, a historicresort indowntownBonitaSprings,appearsundamagedby HurricaneIrma.PATRICK

RILEY/NAPLES

DAILY NEWS

PATRICK RILEYPATRICK.RILEY@NAPLESNEWS.COM; 239-263-4825

See BONITA, Page 4A

+ Naples Daily News Wednesday, September 20, 2017 3A

SWFLATODAY Updated news online SWFLATODAY naplesnews.com

HURRICANE IRMA

Shawn and Mary Moore have weath-ered tough times in their 25-year mar-riage, all of which helped the couplemanage staying in a shelter before Hur-ricane Irma ravaged Southwest Florida.

Mary Moore, 41, has epilepsy. In 2012the couple were in a car accident, and shefaced a series of surgeries to piece hershattered body back together.

Among the myriad services the RedCross provides in times of disasters isstress management assistance in shel-ters for evacuees from hurricanes, tor-nadoes, fires and other events.

“They all look out for one another,”said Mary Moore, of North Fort Myers.“They keep telling me to keep my chin upand it’s going to get better.”

All of the shelters opened for Irmahave licensed mental health profession-als to circulate among the residents. Thecounselors offer ways to help them copewith the disruption in their lives.

At the Estero Community Park andRecreation Center, half a dozen of themental health professionals were onhand Tuesday for any of the 463 evacu-ees. The number has held steady under500 individuals, said Bob Wallace, a RedCross spokesman.

“We have counselors roaming in tomake contact and visit with the people,and they are welcome to approach us,and we counsel staff,” said Janet Michel,one of the counselors. “Our staff goesthrough a great deal of strain working 12-hour days.”

People bring their issues with them tothe shelter, and those issues don’t goaway, said Michel, of Fort Myers Beach.

Stress management focuses on whatan individual needs at the moment,which could be medication, food, helpcontacting a loved one in a distant place,or similar “right now” issues, said PeggyMcGee-Smith, the lead disaster mentalhealth counselor in the Estero shelter.“Things are going on in people’s lives,and we give them support and listen.”

Another focus is to distract the evacu-ees from where they are now, she said.

The Church of the Brethren runs achildren’s disaster service and went tothe shelter with clowns and balloon mak-ers to help children cope with their anxi-ety.

Some people who come into the shel-ter offer to help with chores, and that’s agood way to get through shelter life.

“They feel productive,” Michel said.“They feel useful.”

Shawn Moore said the Red Cross vol-unteers have been wonderful and help-ful. He spoke to his landlord and foundout the manufactured home that he andhis wife rented was still under water.

“We couldn’t go back there if we want-ed to,” he said.

Red Crosshelps withstress ofevacueesMental health pros movethrough crowds at sheltersLIZ FREEMANLIZ.FREEMAN@NAPLESNEWS.COM; 239-263-4778

See IRMA STRESS, Page 6A

Although hammered by Hurricane Ir-ma, the ancient forest at Audubon’sCorkscrew Swamp Sanctuary will re-cover and survive, as it has for manygenerations and scores of hurricanestrikes.

The famous ghost orchid tree is stillstanding after Irma’s eyewall torethrough the 13,000-acre sanctuary inGolden Gate Estates, but two landmarktrees were lost, and the 2.25-mile board-walk was heavily damaged by many oth-er fallen trees.

Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary director Jason Lauritsen gives a tour Friday to show damage from Hurricane Irma. PHOTOS BY JUSTIN GILLILAND/SPECIAL TO THE NAPLES DAILY NEWS

Forest is damagedLauritsenwalks on afallen treeFriday. Twolandmarktrees werelost in thesanctuaryduring Irma,and the2.25-mileboardwalkwas damagedby otherdownedtrees.

Irma took down big treesat Corkscrew Swamp siteTIM ATENTIM.ATEN@NAPLESNEWS.COM; 239-263-4857

See FOREST, Page 4A

See a video of damage to the

Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary.

naplesnews.com

TALLAHASSEE — A new FloridaHouse committee ordered to reviewhow the state responded to HurricaneIrma will propose legislation requiringall nursing homes and assisted-livingfacilities have a backup source of elec-tricity.

Eight people died after experiencingoven-like conditions in a Hollywoodnursing home, and House Speaker

Richard Corcoran said Tuesday the leg-islation is at the top of the agenda for theSelect Committee on Hurricane Re-sponse and Preparedness. The panelwill file a bill similar to one filed by thestate Senate.

“I’m sure one of our colleagues willrun that legislation and that legislationwill be discussed,” said Corcoran, R-Land O’ Lakes. “Literally, it will be dis-cussed in the next two weeks, and it wason the list we sent out to our members.”

Corcoran wants to pay for some of thechanges by cutting special projects fromthe state budget. He said this year’s $83

House will address hurricane problemsCommittee will examinestate’s response to IrmaAREK SARKISSIANAREK.SARKISSIAN@NAPLESNEWS.COM; 850-559-7620

“Sorry out of service,” reads a sign coveringone of the pump handles at a gas station.JOSHUA L. JONES, AP See HOUSE, Page 6A

4A Wednesday, September 20, 2017 Naples Daily News +

HURRICANE IRMA

“They just need to get cleaned up,”Bellamy said of the famous trees,which tower over the property’scourtyard and had some of theirmighty branches mangled by thepowerful winds.

“They’re going to be fine. ... Didn’tdamage the root system at all.”

The giant Mysore fig trees are twoof only four in all of Southwest Flori-da, said John Domanski, the facilitiesand maintenance manager for theproperty.

That number declined even fur-ther when the ferocious hurricaneuprooted a large Mysore fig tree atthe Edison & Ford Winter Estates inFort Myers. Another — bigger — My-sore fig tree at the Estates survivedthe storm.

“These are pretty strong trees,”Domanski said.

The resort suffered “a completeloss to very few trees,” and its organicgarden survived the storm, too, sus-taining only minimal damage, Bella-my said.

“We really didn’t lose anything,” hesaid. “It’s just a lot of cleanup.

“We were very fortunate.”The hotel, which continues to con-

duct renovations inside its mainhouse, now plans to bring in someheavier machinery, including a crane,to finish cleaning the courtyard.

“Now it’s time to bring in the bigboys,” Bellamy said.

As has been the case throughoutBonita Springs, the resort’s nearbywaterway — the Oak Creek — rosethreateningly high after the storm.But unlike other properties aroundtown, the hotel was spared any flooddamage.

The creek’s water rose between 5and 7 feet, Bellamy said.

“We couldn’t access the south sideof the property on either our bridges,”he said.

About a mile north on Old 41 Road,another longtime Bonita Springs es-tablishment was spared the worst.

Buffalo Chips, which turned 35years old this month, sustained someroof damage to the restaurant and atrailer behind it, where some of theemployees live, said General Man-ager Sally Majestic, but it was openfor business again in less than a week.

“This place has been here forever,”said Majestic, who is the cousin ofChip Greenwood, the restaurant own-er. “We are really counting our bless-ings.”

After widespread flooding in thearea just weeks before the hurricanehit, the restaurant got rid of somenearby trees, Majestic said.

“We had a couple of big trees thatwere already coming out from theflooding that we were able to get atree service out before the hurricaneto get that cut down,” she said. “Be-cause that was, like, right by our lines,our power lines; that would’ve been anightmare.”

And in another stroke of luck, therestaurant’s motel housed some Flori-da Power & Light employees whowere able to restore power to the busi-ness early last week, enabling it to re-open Thursday.

“We were lucky that it wasn’t a bigissue and it wasn’t the trees or any-thing involved,” Majestic said.

The restaurant’s motel blocked offits rooms online for the time being tokeep the bulk of the 11 rooms availablefor cleanup crews or residents in needof temporary lodging, Majestic said.

Ever since the hurricane hit, themotel has been slammed with re-quests for rooms.

“We have so many people in thisarea,” she said. “So we’re closingdown all our outside reservations andonly taking care of our community.”

Bonita Continued from Page 3A

“This place has been

here forever. We are

really counting our

blessings.”

SALLY MAJESTICGENERAL MANAGER

OF BUFFALO CHIPS RESTAURANT

The sanctuary may have seen some ofIrma’s worst winds on the so-called dirtyside of the hurricane.

“We were on the northeast edge ofthat wall when it first came in. The backside wasn’t so bad. By the time it gothere, the back side had disintegratedquite a bit,” said Jason Lauritsen, direc-tor of Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, offImmokalee Road in northern CollierCounty.

Many massive bald cypress trees, oneat least 400 years old and more than 6feet in diameter, fell across the woodenboardwalk that allows visitors to getclose to rare and unique Florida flora andfauna in the last remaining old-growthbald cypress forest in the world.

“We have seven locations where mas-sive trunks have fallen all the waythrough the boardwalk. That’s major re-pair sections,” Lauritsen said.

Lauritsen hasn’t counted the numer-ous sections of boardwalk where just thehandrails or side rails are down but theboardwalk is still passable.

“There are probably two dozen, if notmore, like that,” he said, referring to asection of wooden railing where a pinetree fell near the Blair Audubon Center,the nature store and exhibit area thatserves as the gateway to the boardwalk.

The goal is to have at least the mile-long short loop of the boardwalk open ina couple of weeks. Although five treesfell on this bypass stretch, none brokethrough the walk’s planks of ipe, a dura-ble Brazilian hardwood.

“Right now our boardwalk’s closed.It’s been closed since the Thursday be-fore the hurricane hit. Because of the ex-tent of the damage on the boardwalk it-self, we’re looking at at least two moreweeks before we open to a limited trafficand probably a month before we canopen the whole thing just because of thedamage.”

Discovered just a decade ago at thesanctuary, its ever-popular super ghostorchid rode out the storm from its spotabout 50 feet up in an old-growth bald cy-press tree and about 100 feet away fromthe main boardwalk loop.

“They’re calling in and texting in toask about the ghost orchid. Everybody’sworried about that tree and the flowerson it,” Lauritsen said. “It’s certainly niceto know that people care and pay atten-tion.”

Among the sanctuary’s casualties inthe storm were two of its historic land-mark old-growth bald cypress trees. Afew years ago, the sanctuary marked adozen of these distinctive living senti-nels in an effort to help visitors who opt-ed for self-guided tours on the board-walk to notice the forest and the value ofthe forest, Lauritsen said.

“They’re not necessarily the 12 larg-est. They’re some of the largest. Theyhave stories to tell, and we’ve namedthem, and we’ve signed them, so they’rethings people will notice,” he said. “Twoof those, two of the 12, fell in the storm —the DaVinci Tree and the Guy BradleyTree.”

Named after naturalists, the massivetrees will remain where they fell, provid-ing a nursery for future trees and wild-life that can grow out of them or live inthem.

The damage done 57 years ago byHurricane Donna can still be seen onsome of the massive trees that had asmuch as 30 feet of their tops sheared off

in that benchmark storm. That 1960 hur-ricane didn’t leave as much for Irma todamage a half-century later.

“The storm and the winds we hadhere, we didn’t have 30 extra feet oftrees. We had some that were over 100feet, but none that were at the 130, 140that they can get to. That again is be-cause of Donna. Donna changed the land-scape,” Lauritsen said. “When Donnacame and smashed big pieces of board-walk, as well, you just saw the power ofthat storm, and it left a lot of nursery logsyou can see laden with ferns and othercypress trees growing up out of them.”

None of the debris will be removedfrom the sanctuary, and staff will attachfallen orchids onto other trees. With theexception of one or two of the largertrunks, which will be taken inside thecenter for educational purposes, thetrees and debris on the boardwalk will bepushed into the swamp.

“We don’t harvest these for any com-mercial purposes. This will be a nursery.It’s a natural process. It’s a rare event,but it’s a natural event,” Lauritsen said.

The largest cypress to fall on theboardwalk is a specimen of about 20 feetin circumference and more than 6 feet indiameter wrapped in a strangler fig.Bees can be seen flying in and out of aneye-shaped cavity in a fractured branchthat is now just a few feet above theswamp in the Lettuce Lakes strand of thesanctuary.

“This tree was known to us as the BeeTree,” Lauritsen said. “It has a healthyhoneybee hive in one of the canopybranches. Of course, opportunities likethis are unique because you have achance to look into the canopy of the treeat eye level and see what’s growing in

there and what kinds of insects are pre-sent as well.”

The top of this more than 400-year-oldtree was knocked off by Donna, mostlikely triggering the massive tree’s heartrot, which made it weak enough that itcould not withstand the force of Irma.

“It’s dealt with a lot of storms. This is anatural event. What makes it the mostvulnerable is the fact that it’s the onlyforest like it left. So these kinds of eventscost a little ecologically,” Lauritsen said.“The biomass is still in the canopy. It’sgoing to enrich the peat. It’s going to en-rich the water.”

An immediate positive outcome fromIrma’s destruction is that a plant speciesnot seen before at Corkscrew SwampSanctuary was spotted Friday morningby George Wilder, botanist and herbari-um curator at the Naples BotanicalGarden.

“We came here 159 times and neversaw it, but today I saw it because it hadbeen blown from high up out of a tree, Iguess, and was on the ground,” Wildersaid. “It’s called twisted airplant. I’venever seen it here. It’s normally a coastalspecies.”

Wilder and Jean McCollom, who re-tired from the Florida Fish and WildlifeConservation Commission, recentlycompleted a flora survey documentingmore than 750 plants representative ofthe biological diversity at Corkscrew,where they used to work years ago.

“Of the 700 species we found, this wasnot one of them,” McCollom said of thetwisted airplant. “This is exciting.”

Standing outside the sanctuary’s na-ture center Friday, McCollom reiteratedthat the local environment will recover,despite taking a good beating.

“People don’t like to hear this right af-ter a hurricane, but this is perfectly nat-ural, so to speak,” she said. “Audubon hasa sanctuary in South Carolina that washit by Hurricane Hugo (in 1989), and wedid a lot of work on that. We took a fieldtrip around 10 years later to show hurri-cane damage, and we could see it, but no-body else could. It’s one of those things.These swamps recover. They’ve beenformed by hurricanes. That’s part oftheir history. It looks horrible, and indi-vidual trees we’ll cry over, but you knowit is a natural event.

“Now, repairing the boardwalk maybe another thing.”

To make donations to help repair theboardwalk, visit the sanctuary’s websiteat http://corkscrew.audubon.org/irma.

Handrails and side rails were damaged on numerous sections of the boardwalk in Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, but the boardwalk still ispassable on some of those sections. JUSTIN GILLILAND/SPECIAL TO THE NAPLES DAILY NEWS

Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary director Jason Lauritsen holds a rare twisted airplant speciesfound recently. Lauritsen gave a tour of the sanctuary Friday to show damage from HurricaneIrma. JUSTIN GILLILAND/SPECIAL TO THE NAPLES DAILY NEWS

ForestContinued from Page 3A

“We have seven

locations where massive

trunks have fallen

all the way through

the boardwalk. That’s

major repair sections.”

JASON LAURITSENDIRECTOR OF CORKSCREW SWAMP SANCTUARY

ndnbrd_dailynews_09-20-2017_b_a_004.pdf 1 20-Sep-17 04:11:34