Son shares trip to rescue mother from flooded house after Jan

FORT MYERS, Fla. — In one photo, Johnnie Loder’s 86-year-old mother in her Florida home, up to her shoulders in murky black water, stares straight into the camera with her mouth open.

In another, she is lying just above the waterline on a table, wrapped in sheets for warmth. In another, she is being pushed through the water in a wheelchair, her rescue almost complete.

Photographs were made after Hurricane Ian made landfall last Wednesday, bringing powerful storm surge and winds of 150 miles per hour (241 kilometers per hour). They tell the story of Lauder’s journey to rescue his mother, Karen Lauder, from the home she refused to leave despite her family’s pleas.

He sent short videos and pictures to his family to let them know he was okay.

“In this way I inadvertently documented all the trials,” he said.

Before the storm, Lauder said his mother, who lost a leg and requires a wheelchair, was “kicking and screaming” and said she didn’t want to leave her home in Naples, Florida. “We didn’t evacuate because we couldn’t leave her,” he explained.

She did not wait level of destruction Ian would bring. Speaking Tuesday from his son’s home, Loder said his mother’s home was flooded by about 6 inches during Hurricane Irma in 2017, so she assumed the outcome would be similar to Jan’s.

Instead, Ian ravaged Florida as one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the United States and flooded more than three feet her home, keeping her inside. She called her son for help.

“She said the water came up to her wheelchair and hit her belly button,” Loder said. He was hiding in his son’s house, half a mile (0.8 km) from his mother.

Lauder, who said he was trained as a rescue diver, dove from the window. He swam, walked, waded and kicked in the water for about 45 minutes to get to her house. He said a van and several cars passed him as he avoided sparking power poles.

Lauder said he heard his mother scream as he approached.

“It was a feeling of horror and relief at the same time,” he said. “The horror was that I didn’t know if something was falling on her or if she was trapped and injured. But it was a relief to know that there was still air in her lungs.’

He placed her on the table and wrapped her in dry sheets from the high shelf. He was concerned about the sores around her body – open wounds that were dangerously susceptible to bacterial infection – flooded with water.

They waited three hours for the water to recede so he could wheel her around the streets in a wheelchair. When the water rose a couple of feet, he called his 20-year-old son to join them and help push his grandmother to safety.

Around 1 a.m. — about 11 hours after Lauder’s mother called him for help — Lauder returned to his older son’s home with his mother and younger son.

Lauder said his mother was later taken to the hospital because she had some infections. “But they were treated and she is warm. She is in a soft, comfortable bed. She is good,” he added.

Cassandra Clark, Lauder’s sister-in-law in Miami, set up a GoFundMe to raise money for Lauder, his mother and sons.

“While we are so thankful that our family is physically okay, they lost absolutely everything in this storm and unfortunately did not have renter’s insurance,” Clark wrote.

As of Tuesday, the page had raised more than $17,000.

“What worries me is that all these people are helping me and they don’t even know me,” Loder said.

He hopes that now people will know to evacuate. “Mom has changed her tune: next time she will evacuate,” he said. “I hope people learn from other people’s mistakes, not their own.”