As an avid shell collector, I frequently time fall vacations to Sanibel after a tropical storm (not a hurricane) because the shelling is so good. In fact, I was planning to go sometime this fall. Locals, any idea how bad Mitchell's or Tropical Winds were hit? Or how about my favorite restauraunt, The Green Flash?

Glad to hear Bailey's and The Lazy Flamingo are up and running. Another question for locals: Do you think Sanibel will be open for tourist biz any time this season? And how do you think the economic damage caused by the hurricane will effect hotel rates, restaurant rates, ect? Do you think Sanibel will become even more expensive, or will hoteliers be running deals this winter?

Best wishes to my beloved Sanibel....

The above article out of the Miami Herald seems to sum things up pretty well. We were on Captiva yesterday and there was more roof damage, more trees down than Sanibel, yet certainly not the destruction of Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda.
My personal guess is that we will be back in our home on Sanibel sometime next week provided we have our water and electricity restored; the stores on Sanibel and Ft. Myers Beach will be operational within a month; our store on Captiva in 90 days. What kind of business we may have is ?????.

Swim Chick: what business do you have on Captiva? It looked like the businesses on Andy Rosse Lane were messy but not destroyed: witness the report on the Bubble Room. LMF

South Seas/Sundial has on their website that they expect to open their Sanibel resorts for the Labor Day weekend and also they expect South Seas to be fully operational for the Christmas holiday.

I am with Beach House Swimwear, we are at Periwinkle Place on Sanibel and Chadwicks Square on Captiva.

How did Periwinkle Place fare in the storm? Any news on the Mucky Duck?!!

It sounds terrible to worry about vegetation, but I can't even begin imagine that drive without the beautiful canopy of trees. <i>That</i> was almost magical, even to those who also live in Florida!

Australian pines...they are beautiful and we've all been warned about them, but it's so hard to bring down something that looks so glorious 99.9% of the time.

Do you know anything about Casa Ybel? Glad to hear Baileys is up and running. I was surprised to learn recently that they live in Tampa...although they have about an acre of property down there with something, evidently NOT elaborate, sitting on it. A friend and her family used it the weekend before all this.

OO, we own some Casa Ybel February weeks and have been eagerly following the information on the News Press website. They provide updates for every town affected by Charley, and also a very helpful forum where public can post questions and information. &lt;http://www.news-press.net/myStory/ge...ORY_ID=378&gt;

There is chat on there now about an apparent conflict between the 2-day old relatively upbeat news posted on casaybelresorts.com, and the much more pessimistic assessment on hgvc.com &lt;http://www.hgvc.com/hurricane_charley.htm&gt;(Hilton, corp. owner of the property). Wish I could see for myself.

And thanks to LilMsFoodie for posting the Miami Herald story. We'd been wondering about Ding Darling and how it was faring.

SB_Travlr...I'm <u>so</u> sorry to hear that! I just read their damage description and you must be sick. What a fabulous complex that is--very very sad news. Not sure how timeshares work as far as furniture replacement etc...are each of you assessed? Was your unit one that lost it's roof?

It seems hard to believe that Casa Ybel sustained that much damage, yet Tween Waters and South Seas further north don't sound too bad? Or they didn't sound too bad...but when I read of South Seas being fully functional by Christmas, I wondered if damage isn't worse than the way it was made to sound.

Thank you for the link. :( Very sad, isn't it! That area, like the MS Gulf Coast, is forever changed.

I know this isn't really travel related (and not sure if it was Sanible) but I saw that guy on tv who was tazered in front of his kids for tying to go back to his home. Does anyone know what happened with that? Just seemed to be wrong that they did that to him. First your home is potentially destroyed and then you get treated like that in front of your kids (not saying he should have barged through a police barrier though).

The controversary over residents being readmitted to the island will become even more heated in the months to come. Like on Sanibel, here in Naples we residents have re-entry permits and have always been told if we evacuate we can get back to our homes after the storm with our permits. So it is understandable how upset residents got when they tried to return and were told they couldn't for several days. Especially considering these were the people who followed orders and evacuated as told. Those who disobeyed the orders and didn't evacuate, were not only allowed to remain in their homes after the storm, but some groups were even bringing them food, water, etc.
Obviously there are two sides to this story, and it is easy to understand that the island needed to be safe for re-entry, but people do feel they were being &quot;punished&quot; for following orders, and that all these years they have been lied to about being able to get back to their homes if they evacuate.

Sorry, what is &quot;tazered&quot;?

I can certainly understand someone having a house there feeling they had the right to go back &quot;at their own risk&quot;. Can't imagine not knowing for as many days as that, especially if as Patrick suggested, they had a pass proving residence.

Whatever tazering is (?) it has unpleasant ring to it and it hardly seems to be the time for any sort of force, which I assume this was.

It's a device that some police use that sort of electrocutes you (I'm sure someone else has a better definition). Last night in Denver a man was wandering around a street, foaming at the mouth and some people reported him. When the police arrived he wouldn't cooperate or something to that effect so they used the tazer to subdue him which apparently didn't have any affect and he later died. I'm sure there is more to this story but the guy in Florida didn't look like he really deserved that.

Er, not electrocution hopefully! It's that stick that shocks I take it? That's excessive. People are hot, tired, and under stress for days. Tempers are flaring, and after a while, <i>everyone's</i> better judgment leaves with the hurricane.

Jeez! A Tazer!! That is certainly overkill!
OO, the police use it to control a violent person, who they might otherwise shoot. They used to be Stun guns.
Sheesh.

Looks like my article that I pasted with attribution which is according to the Miami Herald's policy has been axed by Fodors. Too bad.

Search for Miami Herald. I had the link at the bottom of the article. I would think that they could have included that and deleted the quoted material.

Better to have us post hearsay and second hand reports here. LMF

They seem to have been editing in full force today! I'll try to find it online.

Casa Ybel was one of the places we took a lot of aerial pics of last Tuesday. It has a lot of roof damage, but doesn't look like serious structure damage. There is a place about 1/4 mile East called Ocean's Beach (I think, something like that) that sustained much more damge. I spent all day today trying to match up pics to the correct place names (not easy sometimes when your view is 500 ft up!). Upon looking more, South Seas had more damage than I originally thought, but again most roof damage.

SB_travlr- if you like, maybe I can e-mail you one of the Casa Ybel pics when I get into the office on Monday, so you can see for yourself.

Have just discovered that we have both power and water on Sanibel...so happy to be able to go back home!

The only time residents here are forbidden to re-enter is when there are live wires on the ground or gas leaks. Could that be the case as to why?

It usually takes the national guard, police, and red cross a short while to check these things out.

There must have been a reason.

Gotravel, before they allowed Sanibel folks back, they kept repeating &quot;not until officials have inspected the bridge, cleared ALL the roads and inspected ALL the homes.&quot; I think that's outrageous, especially the part about inspecting the homes. Let the homeowners do that! They claimed it was to hold down looting...but heck who were these &quot;inspectors&quot;? Reports now show that they way underestimated the number of homes damaged anyway. I think they made a big mistake with the whole thing, digging their heels in way too long. It seemed like a bureaucratic power trip to me.

The &quot;reentry permits&quot; Patrick refers to must be peculiar to Naples...where I live it's informal - as soon as the roads are clear. I remember in '84 they cleared a walking path to my barrier island subdivision, allowing residents to walk in until the roads were cleared a couple of days later.