Hurricane Ian put the Triangle Ranch under water



When Elizabeth Moore bought Triangle Ranch in 2016, she built it with a 100-year flood plan in mind. She had Josh Wynne Construction put the Cracker Cottages on piers in preparation for those age-old storms when the Myakka River overflows. But Hurricane Ian was extraordinary. The water got so high that it lapped against the front door of the raised houses.

“It wasn’t a 100-year storm,” Moore says. “It was a 500-year storm.”

While Sarasota’s coast escaped the worst of Hurricane Ian, eastern parts of the county suffered massive flooding. Dairy farms lost cows, Arcadia’s main streets were flooded, and the Myakka River turned into a lake. Triangle Ranch is a 1,143 acre parcel of land located just north of Myakka River State Park. Three miles of the normally calm river meander through the property, and to this day most of the ranch is still underwater.




“It was a very freak storm,” says Jason McKendree, Triangle Ranch’s land manager. “He passed the 100-year mark. He topped it with fireworks. The water did not reach McKendree’s house, but he and his family have been without power since the storm. Now they have to sit and wait for the water to recede before they can get back to the hard work of replenishing the land.

Usually ironic, McKendree looked tired in a recent phone interview. “Forgive me,” he said. “I don’t have a lot of humor at the moment. I’m exhausted.” He and his family shuttled by boat to assess the damage and tend to the cattle stranded on a pile of dry dirt at the bottom of the ranch.

He says he considers himself lucky. What happened at Triangle Ranch is not as bad as what happened further south. All ranch animals and buildings survived. They lost some metal on an old barn. “People have lost lives and livelihoods,” McKendree said. “We are very lucky and extremely wet. We can still go to bed at night.




After Hurricane Irma hit Triangle Ranch in 2017, McKendree swore he would never clean up after a bad storm again. “I fought to try to get it back,” he says. “This storm here was Irma times 10. It twisted the trees like you wouldn’t believe.” But he is convinced that he will bring the earth back to where it was. Fences will need to be repaired and rebuilt. The brush will need to be cleaned. He just has to wait for the water to recede. During the rainy season, when the ranch is flooded, it takes about 7-10 days for the land to dry out.

“I’ve owned the land for six years and even before that we’ve had two hundred year storms,” ​​Moore says. But, she adds, I didn’t buy this land for people to live on forever. “This land is for nature and our watershed,” she says. “Water is supposed to do that. It’s annoying for us humans, but that’s what it’s supposed to do. Maybe one day it will be Triangle Lake.




“I’ve owned the land for six years and even before that we’ve had two hundred year storms,” ​​Moore says. But, she adds, I didn’t buy this land for people to live on forever. “This land is for nature and our watershed,” she says. “Water is supposed to do that. It’s annoying for us humans, but that’s what it’s supposed to do. Maybe one day it will be Triangle Lake.




Because the ranch is still green, it won’t take long for things to get back to normal. The ranch’s AirBnB operations are expected to be up and running early next month. Moore wants us to imagine how different things might have been had the land been turned into an underdevelopment. “A thousand people a day, new houses, new roofs, parking lots, roads and supermarkets,” says Moore. “It’s all an impermeable surface and leaves nowhere for water to go.” At Triangle Ranch, the water will soon fall back into the earth. “You can’t fight nature,” she says.

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