- So we're here at the Vester Field Station, and really the damage that we're seeing was all about storm surge.

We see very little wind damage, a couple trees down.

But we have somewhere on the order of a seven, eight-foot storm surge it looks like.

And everything that could float floated.

But we did a really good job of trying to get things in rooms, but then they just started floating around the rooms and just making a mess of everything.

So a lot of damaged furniture, refrigerators, freezers and just a big mess.

Unfortunately, we did lose some samples.

So we had chest freezers that had fish that we collected that were looking at the toxin levels in the fish just naturally occurring toxins that we keep an eye on, looking at mercury and things like that.

So those fish are lost.

On one level because it's a waste of the fish, but the effort and the time is also lost in that.

We also had a lot of different water samples to look at nutrients and to look at other chemicals in the water and we lost too many of those.

And again, it's mainly the time factor and the effort that went into that.

The first thing is just sorting through what we can keep and what needs to be thrown away.

Fortunately, we're going to have to pull off drywall like a lot of residents have to do.

Pull up the flooring, dry everything out, see what the electrical wiring looks like.

The plumbing, we have plumbing issues.

And then just rebuild and see what can we do better.

We already have some ideas that mitigate some of the damage from a future storm surge.

And then just start seeing what we need to replace.

And it's probably going to take years because we're going to forget where are those pair of tweezers that I had and forget, oh yeah, it was before Ian.

So it'll take a while to get everything up and running.