As geysers shot up through the buckled floors and the deadbolts on the doors snapped under Hurricane Ian, the eight people trapped in the Hideaway Village motel realized they might die.
Even as she watched a large building lift off the ground and barrel toward her, the general manager of the Fort Myers Beach motel kept her two adult daughters on the phone, too afraid to say goodbye.
Radabaugh said that he didn't see any way he could survive.
As storm-surge waves carried them upward, four people tied themselves together with a sheet and lay on a mattress in an adjacent room.
One of Maston's cousins, a mother of four, was killed when the surge pinned them against the ceiling. A motel employee pulled the women out of the water after the motel crashed.
A man and his wife and son were hoisted up to the rafters by a broken ceiling panel that had never been fixed.
They were there for over a day.
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After missing their initial flight out of Dayton, Ohio, Mas and her family were forced to stay at a motel.
Maston said they were going to have a great party for Nishelle Harris-Miles.
After eating at a nearby bar, the group went back to their room on the second floor to get their picture taken.
Maston said they were having fun.
A motel employee and his family arrived later that night. He made a last-minute decision to move his family from their one-story home to a motel on higher ground because he was worried about the forecast.
She didn't want to be there. She didn't want to leave the motel's new overnight guests, so she packed her Jeep and left.
The general manager was unable to go.
In their three separate rooms, side by side on the second floor, the eight people hunkered down as the Category 4 Hurricane made its way towards the area.
We were trapped.
She had never experienced a storm before.
The 49-year-old and her pets jumped up on the bed as the walls crumbled. She put her phone in a bag so she could be tracked. She didn't hang up when she called her girls.
She said she was scared to get off the phone. I don't know what they said.
The building across the street hit the motel and caused the wall to collapse on top of Radabaugh and her pets. The call stopped working.
One of her dogs was ripped out of her arms by a wave. She watched as he went under the water.
The daughters wouldn't hear from her again until 17 hours later.
The four women on vacation panicked as the rain started to fall. Nobody could respond to Maston's call.
She said that all hell broke loose.
They resigned themselves to a mattress as the water poured in.
The motel employee and his family followed suit. But in a life-changing moment, the family's cat, Daniel, sprang out of his carrier and leaped through a broken board above their sofa bed.
The employee who wanted to remain anonymous wrote on a yellow sticky note that the ceiling in Room 33 needed to be fixed. The note was stuck on the desk.
He helped his wife and son through the broken panel as he entered the rafters. He heard the women yelling for help.
He said that they were pinned against the ceiling because they didn't have a hole.
He noticed a nail had pierced Nishelle Harris-Miles when the ceiling came down. He told the women to go up in the rafters.
She didn't respond. He stated that she wasn't moving. I said, 'She's gone.' We have to get on with things.
The group spent a long night in the rafters. The employee was trying to make time go by. The women were focused on thoughts of Harris-Miles.
Maston said they were just worried about her.
Six people were forced to move to a new spot when the saturated wood snapped every now and then.
The employee said that you never knew what part would break off.
They could hear other people's screams all night.
There was a woman stuck in her attic with her husband who only had a flashlight and a small hammer.
She didn't keep much hope for herself. A transplant from Wisconsin wrote a farewell text to her family after moving to Fort Myers Beach. There was a fire inside Thomas.
She said it broke her husband's heart. He was able to get through that roof.
The couple rushed to those trapped in the motel around 3 a.m. They heard their cries for help. We yelled that we knew they were there.
For the first time, he was able to see the true nature of the storm. The water was moving fast. There were homes on top of other homes. There were boats all over the place.
She likened it to being in a war zone.
The people trapped in the motel were able to exit safely because of the path created by the Fischers.
She thought it must have been frightening. They stayed in there all night.
He went to check on others after getting calls for help. She found the man dead in his kitchen.
Someone wrote a message on a piece of cardboard to alert authorities that a person had died.
The motel employee said that there was a sign that said one died. It was changed to two.
The place where the Hideaway Village motel stood for about 60 years is still used as a lodging spot by tourists and locals.
Dozens of businesses were wiped out by the storm.
That has dealt a blow to the economy of southwest Florida, which relies on tourists and part-time residents who typically arrive in late fall and stay through winter.
Even if snowbirds want to come back, it will be hard to find a place to stay because so many places were destroyed.
Middle-class people who worked in the service industry have been the hardest hit by Ian.
There are nearly 29,000 people working at hotels and restaurants in Lee County, where 60 people died in the storm.
It was difficult for workers to find affordable housing before the storm. Cheap-housing options were wiped out by the storm. Workers could be forced to move to other parts of the country.
Some were close to the edge. Claar said that this would intensify the pressure.
A lot of people are without a home or a job.
She thought she was the last person on the planet.
All her possessions had been swept away, except for the sneakers on her feet and Bubbles, her 6-month-old golden retriever, whom she found standing on a pile of debris, her tail wagging, just before a US Coast Guard helicopter swooped down to rescue them.
Radabaugh is staying with one of her daughters in Texas.
Two weeks after the storm, she still has a persistent cough, but her ribs and lacerations have healed.
I'm okay. She said she's not mentally and financially.
The other motel employee has relied on his family and friends. He is thankful that his son is alive and well to celebrate his 11th birthday.
Maston's family is getting ready to say their final goodbyes to Harris-Miles, who will be laid to rest on Saturday.
Harris-Miles was a home health aide and a mother to two boys and two girls.
"She loved to have fun," Maston said. She was fond of cooking. She was a big fan of decorating. She made jewelry. She was fond of her children.
Maston said that they were always with each other.
The article was first published on NBC News.
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