FORT MYERS BEACH, Fla. — A woman on Fort Myers Beach is recounting her harrowing story of survival.
“A lot of images I can’t unsee, can’t forget,” Lori Fisk said.
Fisk chose to ride out the storm at her house with three of her friends on Matanzas Court.
NBC2’s Kyla Galer met them the day before the storm as they helped board up the restaurants where they worked in Times Square. They thought they had a plan.
“I live right here on the beach. I got a generator, I’m up over ten feet … got to pack everything up and get ready for this and hope for the best,” Fisk said on Tuesday, September 27.
They didn’t expect storm surge the height of two-story houses to take over the island.
Fisk sent us videos of the storm as it started to slam the area Wednesday. Then, as the wind got faster and the water rose, they lost touch.
We tracked down Fisk on Friday.
“I thought you were honestly dead for a day or two until I got ahold of your son,” Galer said.
“I know. A lot of people did,” Fisk said.
Fisk was with her friends Bonnie, Melissa and Nick during the storm.
The water kept rising.
“At that point I was like alright we got to come up with a game plan. If we got to go, we got to go,” Fisk said.
Powerful currents kept smashing the house.
“Then we turned around and Melissa goes, ‘holy ****!’ Then, ‘the pink house! The pink house!’ I’m like what? I looked out the front door and I’m like aw, s***. It was coming for us,” Fisk said.
Then another surge came.
“By that time it was almost up to the door handle upstairs. And another surge came the opposite way and the house, the pink house, hit our house,” Fisk said.
Then it hit again, and again.
“Then we all looked up. Nick looked up and I went, ‘holy s*** the whole house had cracked all the way down,” Fisk said.
She grabbed Bonnie who she said wasn’t a good swimmer.
“I went to go jump and the water came in from the backside, swooshed me out. I went under the house. The house came down on me. I saw Bonnie underwater.”
Fisk was sucked under the house. She said thankfully it was still daylight at this point, so she followed the light to swim to the top. But she and Bonnie were pulled under several more times.
“I told her, I said, ‘just hold on to the god**** tree … She goes, ‘ain’t this going to be a mother f***** way to die.’ And I said, b****, you’re not dying on my watch, not like this. Then I got clocked in the head again and all I saw was her going this way and I went under. I came up and there was nobody,” Fisk said.
She managed to crawl onto a roof with an air conditioning unit. She wrapped insulation around her injured leg.
“I took the plastic, put it over my head, grabbed the foil and metal part, swung it over so it could kind of protect me from the side. And just held on for what seemed forever.”
After a few failed attempts, Fisk made it into a nearby house that was still standing.
“Grabbed a couple towels, I apologize, dried off, used your bathroom and then grabbed another towel and went back down, and I was like I gotta get back,” Fisk said.
Fisk said she recognized the Pink Shell Resort, then spotted a light on the third floor of a nearby condo. She knew it was her friends so she pushed her way through debris until she made it.
“Melissa heard my voice and she screamed and she came around the corner. So all three of us held onto each other for a while. Then I had to tell them I couldn’t find Bonnie,” Fisk said.
Her friends hadn’t seen them for hours.
“Nick was right there and his face — and he kept saying, ‘I’m looking at a ghost. I’m looking at a ghost,’” Fisk said.
“I just got chills. It was like seeing a ghost,” Ty Wooley said.
Wooley was there too. He said he only survived, “by the grace of God.”
NBC2 went back to where Fisk’s house once stood. It was covered in debris. The only part of it still standing were a few of the stilts.
“How she found her way, it was just a miracle. It really truly was,”
“It’s mind blowing to go back to that beach. It’s like wow, how did anybody make it? And a lot of people didn’t,” Fisk said.
Like Bonnie, who was originally from Boston, Massachusetts.
“She was like my sister from another mother, that’s what I told everybody,” Fisk said.
Bonnie’s friends found her still holding on to a tree. Wooley put a cross there to honor her.
“Loving mother. Loving grandmother. Amazing friend. She’s really going to be missed,” he said.
Lori said at least ten friends didn’t survive.
“I don’t think we were told in time [to evacuate by officials]. I mean that’s my own personal opinion,” Fisk said.
She said she thought of her kids, grandson and parents in Michigan to give her strength in the storm.
“When they heard my voice, my youngest collapsed,” Fisk said.
Fisk has several fractured bones in one of her legs. She’s beat up physically and emotionally. Her whole ordeal was over the course of eight hours, three of which she was swimming.
“I think everyone knows you’re a fighter,” Galer said.
“I’m a survivor. Always will be. Can’t not be,” Fisk said.
Fisk said the hardest part of all of it is not being able to help others who are also suffering right now.
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