A Fort Myers Beach restaurant is temporarily closed after facing the effects of Hurricane Debby.
Sandy Bottoms Bar & Grill will be closed until October.
Dawn Miller and her husband Mike Miller own Sandy Bottoms Bar & Grill. The Millers said an unexpected storm rolled through on Thursday afternoon and the restaurant's tent went airborne.
"It came in with a shebang and took our tent, blew it up into the air, back down, and it did a lot of damage to the tent. So, nobody was injured. Thank god for that, so the staff had to clean up everything well, first run for their lives," said Dawn Miller.
Then Hurricane Debby passed through and damaged the tent even more.
"It just didn't seem real. And, I honestly didn't expect Sandy's tent to be as bad as it was because the tent survived Idalia last year, somehow we just keep ending up getting on the backside of the stick," said Dawn Miller.
This isn’t the first restaurant the Millers lost to a storm. After ]Hurricane Ian destroyed The Whale, they opened Sandy Bottoms Bar & Grill.
"So we bought the whale three months before Ian and it of course was destroyed. And then I want to say about 6 or 7 months after the storm I just really wanted to have a place for people to go that felt like home, so we bought the tent and decided to put it up," said Dawn Miller.
Dawn Miller said they operated under a tent while waiting to build a more permanent tiki hut structure.
The Millers were going to fix the tent after Thursday's storm until Hurricane Debby came and caused more damage forcing them to close.
"It brought tears to my eyes, I realized that the hurricane season is forecasted to be intense. I realized that the tent could be you know a projectile in a bad storm," said Dawn Miller.
Miller said the restaurant will reopen in October with the new tiki hut.
"October is the beginning of not hurricane season. So if we don't have our tiki, then maybe we will put our tent back up or the summer heat will be gone, we might be able to just use tables and tents but October we will reopen and you know start serving again and pretty sure we’ll have that tiki hut up," said Dawn Miller.
"I love this island so much so it pains me to give up never did I know I’d fall in love with the restaurant business. And. And now I’ve lost two," said Dawn Miller.
Dawn Miller said The Whale is expected to reopen next summer.
"What's most important to me is that everybody remembers to support local businesses on the island because I know its been a rough road," said Dawn Miller.