A look back at the week leading up to the day Hurricane Irma hit Lee County and what the weeks looked like in her passing. Andrea Melendez/news-press.com
1. Hurricane Irma
The once-Category 5 hurricane packed 180 mph winds before coming on shore near Marco Island on Sept. 10, the first hurricane in 12 years to strike Southwest Florida. Thousands took shelter as the storm approached and plowed through Collier and Lee counties. The storm caused an estimated $832 million in damage in Lee County alone.
2. Freeh Report
In February, the Freeh Group released a scathing report about the Fort Myers Police Department. Among the many revelations contained in the report is that a drug trafficking network has killed numerous people, including witnesses. The report said the department has not been able to develop a successful investigation of that network.
3. Dunbar Sludge
In June, The News-Press reported that for half a century, a former dump site sat open to unsuspecting families who were never told about its toxicity. The sludge was dumped in a neighborhood east of downtown in the early 1960s. The city fenced off the area in June and has begun testing levels of arsenic.
4. Arrest of Lake Boyz
Fort Myers police and the state attorney's office in January announced the arrest of 21 men under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, also known as RICO. Police focused in on the Lake Boyz gang, a group living in the Harlem Lakes area of Fort Myers. None of the arrested have yet to go to trial.
5. Island Park-Bonita flooding
While Irma was the big weather event of 2017, a storm deluged Lee County three weeks before the hurricane. The storm dropped as much as 15 inches of rain over four days, causing flooding in the Island Park area of south Fort Myers and in low-lying areas of eastern Bonita Springs.
6. Bonita High School budget blunders
The first students at Bonita Springs High School started classes in August in portable classrooms on the Estero High campus. But the story making headlines was the increased cost of the high school being built on Imperial Parkway. The original estimated cost of $49.9 is ending up at about $84.9 million.
7. Robert E. Lee flap
The national controversy about the removal of Confederate statutes and portraits reached Lee County when the NAACP sought to remove a portrait of county namesake Robert E. Lee from the commission chambers. Commissioners were willing to replace the portrait of Lee in military garb for one in civilian clothing, but the compromise fell apart when the current NAACP board couldn't guarantee a board in the future might seek to have the portrait removed entirely.
8. Southwest Florida's fire season
Thanks to one of the wettest rainy seasons in Southwest Florida history it was easy to forget the region was facing one of its worst wildfire seasons last spring. Structures burned in Lehigh Acres and more than 8,000 acres burned where state firefighters have jurisdiction.
9. FGCU presidential search
The Florida Gulf Coast University Board of Trustees picked Mike Martin in February to serve as the fourth president in FGCU history. Martin beat out three other finalists to succeed Wilson Bradshaw, who served as FGCU's president for 10 years. He was selected after the board failed to agree on a choice during its first round of interviews in 2016. He took over in July.
10. Fort Myers, Cape Coral city elections
It might have been an off-year for state and federal elections, but Cape Coral and Fort Myers held municipal elections. Cape Coral elected a new mayor, Joe Coviello, by a narrow margin. John Gunter, Jennifer Nelson, David Stokes and Rick Williams won council seats. In Fort Myers, Mayor Randy Henderson won re-election, as did council members Teresa Watkins-Brown and Terolyn Watson. Fred Burson won the only open seat.
11. Cape Coral Marni Sawicki
Sawicki, who was finishing up her four-year term this year, became an advocate against domestic violence after her on-again-off again boyfriend then husband beat her up in a Miami Beach hotel.
12. Heat stroke death of Zachary Martin-Polsenberg
Riverdale football player Martin-Polsenberg died of heat stroke at the end of June when he collapsed at the end of a workout. The Lee County Sheriff's investigation ruled the death as accidental, but questions remain about what took place after he laid down and when an ambulance arrived.
13. One dies in Fort Myers plane crash
Passenger Mark Scott died in June when the Piper Cherokee he was riding in crashed into the Chico's daycare center after taking off from Page Field in Fort Myers. The crash happened on a Saturday when the center wasn't open. The pilot survived the crash.
14. Lake Okeechobee releases and money
There wasn't one story that stood out in 2017. Lake Okeechobee made news the entire year. Improvements to the dike around the lake continued as Gov. Rick Scott lobbied Washington for more money to finish the work sooner than scheduled. In June, work began on a reservoir that would hold releases and help the Caloosahatchee River.
15. 21st Century Oncology lawsuits
The Fort Myers-based company faced another year of lawsuits and accusations. The company's founder left the board in January; the company filed for bankruptcy protection in May and the company agreed to pay $26 million in penalties in December for improper self-referrals.
16. Fort Rock leaving
The organizers of the Fort Rock music festival broke the hearts of local heavy metal lovers when it announced in November that it was moving the event to another fort, Fort Lauderdale. They said the event had outgrown the area.
17. Edison Farms purchase
Environmentalists basked in the moment in September when Lee County commissioners purchased Edison Farms in southeast Lee County for $42.4 million.The county used Conservation 20/20 money to preserve the 3,922-acre site.