FORT MYERS, Fla. — Hurricane Ian made its first United States landfall Sep. 8 in the Fort Myers, Florida region.
Quad Cities native Lili Sheedy experienced weaker storm winds and rain where she lives in St. Petersburg, Florida - about two hours north of Fort Myers.
"The trees - some of them were just bent instead of breaking," Sheedy said. "It was crazy - it was really like a bomb exploded."
After the hurricane passed, Lili and her fiancé decided to help.
She said a friend of theirs worked for the nonprofit group Junior League, which put out a call for supply donations.
"They had a spot where they were collecting supplies and going to fill some Amazon trucks – Amazon donated some trucks to fill with supplies," Sheedy explained. "So we thought, why not just fill our own truck and go down with them, because they're going to need help unloading the supplies and everything else."
The extensive damage to infrastructure was a challenge.
"Everything was flooded – cars were flooded, houses were flooded - many people don't have the access to come get the supplies," she said. "So what we ended up having to do with a lot of it was load it back up into our vehicles and take it to a Walmart parking lot where they had a staging area for a ton of supplies just to be dropped off."
Despite that, Lili is happy to have helped those in need.
"We met a young woman that had two little kids and she was pregnant," Sheedy said. "Her trailer had gotten flooded and she was somehow in a rental car. She was very hesitant to take stuff, but we kept putting stuff in her car because we wanted to make sure she had supplies for her and her kids."
She said she's proud of the community coming together to help.
"From the restaurant owners, to the Amazon truck driver, to all these people that just showed up to lug all this heavy water and everything else that we lugged - It was really cool to see."
Lili and her fiancé stayed in Florida when Ian hit, but she said after seeing the destruction, she wants to be more careful for future hurricanes.
More than 100 people have died due to Hurricane Ian.