Beat the Heat: Stay safe during extreme weatherLeaders discuss possibility of shutting down Caloosahatchee Bridge
PUNTA GORDA Prepare for hurricane season with WINK News: 2024 Charlotte County Hurricane Expo With hurricane season less than two weeks away, it’s important to start preparing.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA Beat the Heat: Stay safe during extreme weather The Weather Authority has issued a heat advisory for portions of South, Southeast, and Southwest Florida from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday.
FORT MYERS Leaders discuss possibility of shutting down Caloosahatchee Bridge Should residents endure two years of partial lane closures, or fully shut the Caloosahatchee bridge down for 10 weeks?
GAINESVILLE FGCU softball parents cherish NCAA Tournament experience The parents of the FGCU softball team are relishing seeing their daughters play in the NCAA Tournament.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA The Weather Authority: Hot, hot, hot Heat advisory in place for Saturday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
FORT MYERS Fort Myers teen finds dead body in bed of his truck A 16-year-old in Fort Myers drove to school, drove home, drove to the barbershop and back home again. Then, he noticed a swarm of flies in the back of his truck.
Scottie Scheffler facing felony charges; local attorney reacts The attorney we spoke with told us that, at a minimum, we’d spend the night in jail before having our first appearance and getting bail.
GAINESVILLE FGCU softball falls to No. 4 Florida in NCAA Tournament The FGCU softball team couldn’t keep up with the No. 4 Florida Gators as the Eagles drop their first Regional game 6-0 to the Gators.
Summer Safety: Swim safety tips to know before the summer The pool is warming up to be the hot spot for kids and families this summer. It’s now also the number one leading cause of drowning deaths for children ages 1-4 in the state.
FORT MYERS BEACH ‘The Whale’ restaurant to break ground on new building The Whale is a place that has shown great strength and determination.
COLLIER COUNTY Endangered Florida panther deaths surpass 2023 total in 5 months It’s taken wildlife officials just over five and a half months to report finding more dead endangered Florida panthers than in all of 2023.
FORT MYERS FMPD honors 7 officers and 2 K-9s who died in the line of duty dating back to 1930 Nine lives were given, and all nine will remain remembered. A lifetime of gratitude for the fallen officers.
Firefighter recovering from heat exhaustion after battling flames in Collier County It happened at Progress Rail, a transit corporation on Mercantile Avenue just before 5am on Friday.
FORT MYERS How do SWFL graduation rates compare to the state average? How do graduation rates for Charlotte, Lee and Collier Counties stack up against the state? WINK News crunched the numbers.
FORT MYERS Community divisive over ‘justified’ officer-involved shooting of Christopher Jordan A detective who killed an unarmed black man in a controversial shooting will be back at work on Monday.
PUNTA GORDA Prepare for hurricane season with WINK News: 2024 Charlotte County Hurricane Expo With hurricane season less than two weeks away, it’s important to start preparing.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA Beat the Heat: Stay safe during extreme weather The Weather Authority has issued a heat advisory for portions of South, Southeast, and Southwest Florida from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday.
FORT MYERS Leaders discuss possibility of shutting down Caloosahatchee Bridge Should residents endure two years of partial lane closures, or fully shut the Caloosahatchee bridge down for 10 weeks?
GAINESVILLE FGCU softball parents cherish NCAA Tournament experience The parents of the FGCU softball team are relishing seeing their daughters play in the NCAA Tournament.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA The Weather Authority: Hot, hot, hot Heat advisory in place for Saturday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
FORT MYERS Fort Myers teen finds dead body in bed of his truck A 16-year-old in Fort Myers drove to school, drove home, drove to the barbershop and back home again. Then, he noticed a swarm of flies in the back of his truck.
Scottie Scheffler facing felony charges; local attorney reacts The attorney we spoke with told us that, at a minimum, we’d spend the night in jail before having our first appearance and getting bail.
GAINESVILLE FGCU softball falls to No. 4 Florida in NCAA Tournament The FGCU softball team couldn’t keep up with the No. 4 Florida Gators as the Eagles drop their first Regional game 6-0 to the Gators.
Summer Safety: Swim safety tips to know before the summer The pool is warming up to be the hot spot for kids and families this summer. It’s now also the number one leading cause of drowning deaths for children ages 1-4 in the state.
FORT MYERS BEACH ‘The Whale’ restaurant to break ground on new building The Whale is a place that has shown great strength and determination.
COLLIER COUNTY Endangered Florida panther deaths surpass 2023 total in 5 months It’s taken wildlife officials just over five and a half months to report finding more dead endangered Florida panthers than in all of 2023.
FORT MYERS FMPD honors 7 officers and 2 K-9s who died in the line of duty dating back to 1930 Nine lives were given, and all nine will remain remembered. A lifetime of gratitude for the fallen officers.
Firefighter recovering from heat exhaustion after battling flames in Collier County It happened at Progress Rail, a transit corporation on Mercantile Avenue just before 5am on Friday.
FORT MYERS How do SWFL graduation rates compare to the state average? How do graduation rates for Charlotte, Lee and Collier Counties stack up against the state? WINK News crunched the numbers.
FORT MYERS Community divisive over ‘justified’ officer-involved shooting of Christopher Jordan A detective who killed an unarmed black man in a controversial shooting will be back at work on Monday.
Saint James City damage Credit: WINK News FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) — Dozens of Florida residents left their flooded and splintered homes by boat and by air on Saturday as rescuers continued to search for survivors in the wake of Hurricane Ian, while authorities in South Carolina and North Carolina began taking stock of their losses. The death toll from the storm, one of the strongest hurricanes by wind speed to ever hit the U.S., grew to more than four dozen, with 47 deaths confirmed in Florida, four in North Carolina and three in Cuba. The storm weakened Saturday as it rolled into the mid-Atlantic, but not before it washed out bridges and piers, hurdled massive boats into buildings onshore and sheared roofs off homes, leaving hundreds of thousands without power. The bulk of the deaths confirmed in Florida were from drowning in storm waters, but others from Ian’s tragic aftereffects. An older couple died when they lost power and their oxygen machines shut off, authorities said. As of Saturday, more than 1,000 people had been rescued from flooded areas along Florida’s southwestern coast alone, Daniel Hokanson, a four-star general and head of the National Guard, told The Associated Press while airborne to Florida. Later in the evening, the White House announced that President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden would travel to Florida on Wednesday. No other details of Biden’s visit were immediately released. Chris Schnapp was at the Port Sanibel Marina in Fort Myers on Saturday, waiting to see whether her 83-year-old mother-in-law had been evacuated from Sanibel Island. A pontoon boat arrived carrying a load of passengers from the island — with suitcases and animals in tow — but Schnapp’s mother-in-law was not among them. “She stayed on the island. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law own two businesses over there. They evacuated. She did not want to go,” Schnapp said. Now, she said, she wasn’t sure if her mother-in-law was still on the island or had been taken to a shelter somewhere. On Pine Island, the largest barrier island off Florida’s Gulf Coast, houses were reduced to splinters and boats littered roadways as a volunteer rescue group went door-to-door, asking residents if they wanted to be evacuated. People described the horror of being trapped in their homes as water kept rising. “The water just kept pounding the house and we watched, boats, houses — we watched everything just go flying by,” Joe Conforti said as he fought back tears. He said if it wasn’t for his wife, who suggested they get up on a table to avoid the rising water, he wouldn’t have made it: “I started to lose sensibility, because when the water’s at your door and it’s splashing on the door and you’re seeing how fast it’s moving, there’s no way you’re going to survive that.” River flooding posed a major challenge at times to rescue and supply delivery efforts. The Myakka River washed over a stretch of Interstate 75, forcing a traffic-snarling highway closure for a while. The key corridor links Tampa to the north with the hard-hit southwest Florida region that straddles Port Charlotte and Fort Myers. Later Saturday, state officials said, water levels had receded enough that I-75 could be fully reopened. While rising waters in Florida’s southwest rivers have crested or are near cresting, the levels aren’t expected to drop significantly for days, said National Weather Service meteorologist Tyler Fleming in Tampa. Elsewhere, South Carolina’s Pawleys Island — a beach community roughly 75 miles (115 kilometers) up the coast from Charleston — was among the places hardest hit. Power remained knocked out to at least half of the island Saturday. Eddie Wilder, who has been coming to Pawleys Island for more than six decades, said Friday’s storm was “insane.” He said waves as high as 25 feet (7.6 meters) washed away the local pier, an iconic landmark. “We watched it hit the pier and saw the pier disappear,” said Wilder, whose house 30 feet (9 meters) above the ocean stayed dry inside. “We watched it crumble and and watched it float by with an American flag.” The Pawleys pier was one of at least four along South Carolina’s coast destroyed by battering winds and rain. Meanwhile, the intracoastal waterway was strewn with the remnants of several boat houses knocked off their pilings. John Joseph, whose father built the family’s beige beach house in 1962, said Saturday he was elated to return from Georgetown — which took a direct hit. He found his Pawleys Island home entirely intact. “Thank God these walls are still here, and we feel very blessed that this is the worst thing,” he said of sand that had swept under his home. “What happened in Florida — gosh, God bless us. If we’d had a Category 4, I wouldn’t be here.“ In North Carolina, the storm claimed four lives and mostly downed trees and power lines, leaving over 280,000 people statewide without power at one point Saturday morning, officials said. The outages were down sharply hours later, after crews worked to restore power. Two of the North Carolina deaths were from storm-related vehicle crashes, while officials said a man drowned when his truck plunged into a swamp and another was killed by carbon monoxide poisoning from a generator in a garage. At Port Sanibel Marina in Fort Myers, charter boat captain Ryan Kane inspected damage to two boats Saturday. The storm surge pushed several boats and a dock onshore. He said the boat he owns was totaled so he couldn’t use it to help rescue people. Now, he said, it would be a long time before he’d be chartering fishing clients again. “There’s a hole in the hull. It took water in the motors. It took water in everything,” he said, adding: “You know boats are supposed to be in the water, not in parking lots.” Kinnard reported from Pawleys Island, South Carolina; Associated Press contributors include Freida Frisaro in Miami; Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee, Florida; Gerald Herbert in Pine Island, Florida; Mike Pesoli in Lehigh Acres, Florida; Sarah Rankin in Richmond, Virginia; and Amy Forliti in Minneapolis.