Florida resident secured paralyzed husband to hospital bed and gave him a life jacket

“I took some blankets and I put some holes in them with scissors and I zip-tied them to the hospital bed and then I took a big tarpaulin that had grommets and I zip-tied that over it; and then I put pillows and plastic bags and I duct-taped them to the top of the sideboard and I put pillows between the sideboard and the window because I didn’t want him to get cut up to death if the window blew in, and then I put a life jacket on him so that if the water came in he wouldn’t drown, he would float.”

After ensuring her husband’s safety, Smith hid under the kitchen table and made a “fort with pillows and blankets.” 

Hurricane Ian was unlike anything they had ever experienced before. Smith lived through Hurricane Charley in 2004 and said Ian was much more powerful.

“Charley was less than an hour, the sun came out afterwards, there was no torrential rain,” she said.

Ian, on the other hand, was “awful and long-lasting” with the back end of the hurricane as powerful as the front end, Smith added. She recalled hearing torrential rain but being too afraid to look through the windows into the darkness outside.

“It got dark in the middle of the day,” she said. “It was almost like nighttime and when the rain started it was like snow. You couldn’t see.”

Smith remained downstairs in the kitchen, hiding in her fort and waiting for the storm to pass.