It’s Tuesday, I think.
Everything is a blur of damage, despair and doomed spirits. The complaints have started here in Collier County, and they may not quiet for some time. It’s not people wanting access to their million-dollar homes. It’s the seeming lack of preparation for after the storm. It’s the closed shelters, the outdated automated storm messages, the lack of response in rural, remote areas.
Some people shouldn’t just complain, they should rise up. They should make sure and vote next time there is a local election.
We have been cut off from most basic things since early Monday morning. No power, no internet, no water without boiling it first. But we still have it better than the farm workers and year-round residents of Immokalee. Mark Guss and I last night, sitting by candlelight, thought about what they must be going through. Water surrounds most of their homes. Many have lost everything. Others are trying not to lose more. But, they told us, over and over, no one had come yet to help. Not even the local sheriff’s deputies or firefighters.
County officials didn’t want to hear about it Monday night. It’s tough all over, they said. One county commissioner accused me of making it seem worse than it was, of getting my facts wrong. Look for the positive, he said. At least only one person there died, he said.
If you think Mother Nature is cruel, human nature can be just as bad, if not worse.