Hurricane Ian was a powerful storm. Real estate developers made it a catastrophe.

'Dredge-and-fill' created thousands of homes vulnerable to storm surge.

Jake Bittle

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A century ago, the coast of southwest Florida was a maze of swamps and shoals, prone to frequent flooding and almost impossible to navigate by boat. These days, the region is home to more than 2 million people, and over the past decade it has ranked as one of the fastest-growing parts of the country. Many of those new homes sit mere feet from the ocean, surrounded by canals that flow to the Gulf of Mexico.

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