Fort Myers Beach man saves neighbors from drowning as he and wife were in danger

Note to readers: This is one man's tale of surviving Hurricane Ian. Many others have had similar experiences. There have been more than 50 confirmed deaths in Lee County as of Oct. 9. The expectation from officials is the death toll will continue to rise. 

Fort Myers Beach resident Matt Oakley will never forget the conversation he had with his neighbor across the street during the afternoon of Sept. 28.

They were frantically texting and calling each other.

NEIGHBOR: "What do we do?"

MATT: "Get up on the (kitchen) counters and stay there."

Outside, Matt could no longer see his street. He saw a river. The storm surge from Hurricane Ian, a powerful Category 4 storm, was rapidly rising.

A few minutes went by. Matt was back on his phone. His neighbor and his neighbor's wife needed his help.

NEIGHBOR: "We can't stay here. We gotta go."

MATT: "Go to the attic."

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Matt kept looking outside the second-floor window of his Sterling Avenue home, a house he and his wife Trish had to rebuild after Hurricane Irma in 2017. The water kept rising.

And rising.

And rising.

A few minutes later, Matt watched his Dodge Caravan get swept away in the flood waters. It disappeared in a matter of seconds, swallowed by the surge.

Matt looked at his wife, Trish.

"This is not good," he said.

NEIGHBOR: (now in the attic) "The water is touching our feet."

MATT: "Use your hands, your feet, your fingernails, whatever it takes and you kick through that roof. Kick through the roof!"

The neighbor, who Matt estimated is 6 feet tall, was struggling. His head was hitting the cross beams in the attic. The water level was climbing.

MATT: "Kick through the roof!"

There was silence. Matt was looking out the window again. His eyes were fixed on his neighbor's roof.

Waiting. Hoping. Praying.

"And then ... I looked out ... I saw him ... there he was," Matt said. "He broke through the roof. He kicked it out. He was waving to me."

Maybe he didn't realize it at the time, but Matt had just saved two people from drowning.

His neighbors' names are Thomas and Sheri.

They are from Wisconsin. This was their first hurricane.

Matt doesn't know their last names.

Trying to save their house now

Across the top of Matt Oakley's LinkedIn page is a photograph of him standing in front of the iconic clubhouse at the Augusta National Golf Club, home of the prestigious Masters golf tournament.

Directly beneath that photo, where it says "about," Matt wrote:

"Dedicated, energetic, hard working expert in the game of golf and the business of golf."

After what happened Sept. 28, he can add two more accomplishments to his resume:

Survivor and life-saver.

"It was the most horrifying day of my life," Matt said Thursday evening from his beloved Fort Myers Beach home. He talked about the ordeal he and his wife survived, providing the harrowing details on the same cellphone he used to save his neighbors.

Thursday was Day 8, AI (After Ian). The end of another long day for Matt and Trish, who are doing mitigation work on their two bedroom, two bath house located off Estero Boulevard. It sits along a canal, mid-island, not very far from Estero Bay and not very far from the Mid-Island Laundry and Car Wash.

The scene now is apocalyptic. There are washers and dryers scattered across the landscape like big boulders.

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"No movie compares," Matt said.

Matt and Trish are trying to save their house. Again.

"This is our life’s dream — to live on the beach," Matt said. "This is our home."

Matt isn't a carpenter or a contractor or a drywall expert for that matter. Far from it. The 54-year-old from Bloomington, Minnesota, is the very proud head PGA golf professional at Worthington Country Club in Bonita Springs.

"I've been at Worthington two years and I am very fortunate," Matt said. "I have absolutely loved the experience. It's an amazing place."

For now, instead of a golf club in his hands, he has two crowbars and a hammer. He's been knocking out drywall — "down to the stud" — and ripping out insulation. Items on the first floor of the house have been moved out. Four inches of mud on the tile floors are finally gone.

Stay or go?

For Matt, Trish and many others living along the coast, it wasn't clear which direction the storm was going to take until it was too late.

Trish's mother lives on Cape Coral with her Labradoodle. Matt and Trish have two dogs of their own — Toby, a 14-year-old Boarder Collie and Brownie, a 12-year-old Sheltie. There was a lot to do to prepare, including putting Matt's mother-in-law on a plane to Nashville where Trish's brother lives.

As Ian approached, in the back of their minds was Hurricane Irma. Matt and Trish evacuated for that storm and couldn't get back on the island "for a long time."

"Irma taught us a lot," Matt said. "We were out of our place for 15 months. We had to knock it down."

The rebuild included a confident guarantee from the contractor. Their rebuilt home was built to code for hurricanes. It was structurally sound for wind. But the surge Ian brought with it was a different challenge.

"'The thing will take anything you can give it,'" Matt recalled the contractor saying to him.

"He said, 'You have hurricane windows and doors and at 14 feet above the ground, you can take anything the thing can give you.'

"We thought about what we had been through with other storms and we thought we’d get two or three foot of storm surge and we'd mitigate," Matt said.

It was a psychological tug of war for them. Stay, or evacuate.

The decision was made. Matt and Trish would ride it out and hope for the best.

It didn't take too long for Matt to wonder if they'd made a wise decision.

"All of a sudden we had water at the windows," Matt said. "I was watching boats, jet skis and cars go by. Our street was acting like a river. There were cars and pieces of houses floating by."

Then Matt got to see what happens when the eyewall of a hurricane crosses above.

"All of the water just got pushed back out," he said. "The water almost went out as fast as it came in."

It was temporary. He knew that. The water started coming back. This time in a different direction. All of the debris that had already floated by floated by again.

No movie compares.

Thankfully, the level of the water never made it to the second floor of the house. But it was close. It made it as high as the last step on the stairs going to the second floor.

Inside, Matt and Trish were starting to make their own escape plan, looking up at the ceiling.

"We had one step left," he said. "We thought we'd be poking through the roof. It didn’t look like it was going to stop. We were stacking chairs."

And then it stopped.

Matt loves being a PGA golf professional. He is actively involved in the South Florida PGA section, currently holding the title of vice president for the Southwest Florida chapter. There are 41 sections across the country. Geoff Lofstead is the executive director for the South Florida section.

Every PGA member pays dues that help support an emergency fund for times like these. Matt said Lofstead is working on releasing some of those funds to help him and other golf professionals who were impacted.

"Giving back to the PGA is my goal and mission at this point in my career," Matt said, indicating he tends to not let what happened to him stop him from doing that and being a leader for the PGA in Southwest Florida.

He said the membership and management at Worthington Country Club are supporting him and Trish unendingly.

"They are giving me the time to do this. There is a unit on the property and they are allowing us to stay there," Matt said.

Ironically, Worthington was open for play again Oct. 2. Matt said the most significant damage there was the uprooting of 25-30 trees. He said the superintendent, David Forrey, and his team have done an exceptional job cleaning up the course for play.

Matt said a lot has changed in a short time on Fort Myers Beach. What he has noticed most is the attention and care the residents are giving to each other. He was interrupted several times during this interview by people checking in on him and Trish.

It's very noticeable what has happened.

"Before the storm it was, you know, 'I live in my cage and you live in yours,' " Matt said. "This storm was traumatic and horrific. Life has changed. It's more communal. I would say it is like how we lived many generations ago. People are always asking us if we need something. We are going back to our roots as humans."

On the evening of the storm, Matt said he and Trish "clawed their way up and navigated to the beach."

When they reached the water they got down on their knees. They prayed.

"We said thanks."

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This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Hurricane Ian: Fort Myers Beach man survives storm, saves neighbors