Four months after Hurricane Ian wreaked havoc on Southwest Florida, decimating homes and businesses on Fort Myers Beach, DRMP employees are still doing their part to assist the community in rebuilding.
Employees from DRMP’s Fort Myers, Fla., office and Studio +, an architecture and interior design firm, teamed up to volunteer with Patriot Emergency Response Team (P.E.R.T.) on Jan. 20, 2023, to help gut and muck a home damaged by the hurricane. In the weeks following Hurricane Ian, DRMP and its partner firms, also hosted a food drive and donated $5,000 to the Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida.
In this latest hurricane relief effort, volunteers completely gutted an uninhabitable home on Fort Myers Beach, removing mold-infested furniture, appliances, flooring, cabinetry, drywall, and insulation.
DRMP Fort Myers Office Leader Paul Benvie, PE, said he has a networking relationship with Studio +, which alerted him to the volunteer opportunity.
Benvie and his DRMP colleagues, Project Engineer Dan Zink and Senior Designer and Project Manager Steve Feidler, spent a half day stripping the home with nine other volunteers. Collectively, the volunteers donated about 50 hours of their time to P.E.R.T.
Hurricane Ian also flooded and damaged DRMP’s downtown Fort Myers office and Benvie’s own residence. He and his team are temporarily sharing office space with DRMP’s partner firm, CPH. Benvie and his family had to relocate temporarily to a new home while they rebuild.
“That’s the culture we’re trying to instill in the Fort Myers office to find ways to give back, even when your own circumstances have been impacted,” Benvie said. “Acts of kindness don’t just help the people you’re serving – they are just as beneficial to the giver. The feeling of helping someone in need is so rewarding. We hope our acts of kindness inspire others to pay it forward.”
Feidler said volunteering with P.E.R.T. and Studio+ was a great experience in helping people “tragically affected” by Hurricane Ian.
“It was a great way to give back to those people, in hopes that they can move forward in their recovery process,” Feidler said.
Zink said he’s wanted to find a way to give back to the community since Hurricane Ian hit.
“This was a perfect way to give my time to help,” Zink said. “As a vast majority of us have started to move on with our lives from the hurricane, it’s easy to forget there are still so many in desperate need. To be able to give my time to help in such a situation, felt like the right thing to do and start that process for those that still need it.”
