VANDALIA, Ohio — The stories of survival came by the busload Monday evening as Ohio Task Force 1 returned home.
"Everybody always asks, have you seen this before? Yes, we’ve seen this before," said Mike Lotz, a rescue team manager with Ohio Task Force 1. "They’re all bad. Nothing good comes from it."
Lotz is a lieutenant with the Cincinnati Fire Department. He described one of the rescues the task force was able to make in flood waters.
"It was getting dark. No street signs. It’s Florida, and there’s alligators," Lotz said. "I’m sitting there worried about my guys being out in boats, not being able to see. They called me at dusk that said we have 10 people that have to come out of the house and there’s only two boats. I said, well, figure it out. Whatever you do, they have to come out."
By the numbers, the 84-member team helped in dozens of rescues and made 4,500 building-to-building searches.
"An elderly couple that was literally standing on stools in their house — water up to the chin, that’s where it ended. They survived because it didn’t come up any higher. They were almost up to the ceiling," Lotz said.
The stories shared by task force members, like Jack Reall, painted a devastating reality for hundreds of thousands of people living in Florida.
"At a couple of truck stops just north of Florida, there were people who had lost everything," Reall said. "They looked for somewhere to go to get help. It’s pretty devastating."
Reall was the Ohio Task Force 1 team leader for the Hurricane Ian mission.
“Just walking on Fort Myers beach, every structure there is gone — nothing left," Reall added. "Those people’s homes, jobs, livelihoods and everything. That’s the kind of stuff you can’t describe."
He said the sheer number of people impacted by the hurricane is hard to comprehend.
"I don’t think they realize up here how much area this impacts," Reall said. "We’re talking millions of people who were displaced, and probably won’t have somewhere to go."
Their mission is finished. But both Lotz and Reall know how long the road will be for so many who have been impacted by the storm.
“There’s definitely a bit of guilt coming back and sleeping in a bed tonight knowing there’s a half million people sleeping somewhere else,” Reall said.
Both said they’re hoping resources are made available to help in recovery efforts.
"I look at our part as it’s easy," said Lotz. "We’re in and out. When the emergency is over, so to speak, we’re done with it. Them rebuilding the places, it’s going to take years for them to get it back to some sort of shape."
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