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Another chapter has been written in the ongoing “Gordian Knot” saga of the Boca Grande cell phone tower, as this week cell tower committee members have announced that Lee County has finally issued a demolition permit for the Bakery Building.

At the same time, the committee has had contractors come out to look at the wall between the bakery and The Barnichol Hardware, to determine if it is possible to start construction on the new cell tower base while the building still stands.

It wasn’t days after Hurricane Ian hit the island hard on September 28, 2022 when cellular services started putting up COWs on the island. These Cells on Wheels were placed in the middle of town, as well as one at the north end. There are no COWs south of 1st Street. Even with the COWs, service has been unreliable for many for 10 months now, with some people – primarily on the south end of the island – having no service at all.

Islanders do what they do best when it comes to establishing emergency communications … they do it on their own

Written by Marcy Shortuse on July 27, 2023. Posted in Community, News.

When the winds died down on September 29, about 12 hours after they began, there was a lot of work to be done on Gasparilla Island. There were people to check on, roads to assess and to clear, wires down to deal with and much more. Our island first responders have been through this before and can triage the situation to formulate a plan of action quickly … but there was one problem.

There was no way to communicate. Telephone lines were down and our cell tower was destroyed.

What that toppled cellphone tower took away was much more than the ability to chat, surf the web and text. It took away the ability for first responders to interact with each other – agency to agency – to perform the work that is required after a storm of the magnitude of Ian. Much of it is life-saving work, and the inability to do it was deeply disturbing. To this day – 10 months later – there are people on this island who need the immediate ability to communicate to stay alive, and they do not have it.

Summer heat becoming a real issue with humans, as well as with pets

Written by Marcy Shortuse on July 27, 2023. Posted in Health & Wellness, News.

Anyone who knows island resident Libby Frazier knows that she is a lover of all animals. You might see her on her golf cart in town, several dogs in tow, running daily errands. There are few people who can say they have taken their cockatoo or their chickens to the Blessing of the Animals that the churches used to have here, but she is one of them.
Just recently Libby was at home when she saw her dog, Lucy, running toward her and knew right away that something was wrong. Libby could feel the heat emanating from her, could see her labored breathing and realized that she was overheating.
She did the only thing she could think of, the same thing that many people would do in her position – she filled a tub with cold water, dumped some ice in it and put her little dog in to cool off.
Two days later, though, Lucy passed away. Libby was devastated. We are so sorry for her loss.