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Archive articleThis article covers a real industry development from the indicated week. It was independently written and first published by Auto Glass Shop News on August 21, 2026.
Safety & RecallsArchive week: September 9, 2022 5 min read

Florida Auto Glass Shops Assess Damage and Resume Service After Hurricane Ian Strikes

Hurricane Ian's landfall on September 28 created an emergency surge of glass work in southwest Florida—but distributors, power outages and damaged roads made logistics as challenging as the work itself.

Illustrated portrait for Ethan
By
Ethan
ADAS & Technology Editor

In retrospect, September 28, 2022 was a date that permanently altered the business landscape for auto glass shops across southwest Florida. Hurricane Ian made landfall that day as a Category 4 storm near Fort Myers, generating storm surge, wind damage and vehicle damage at a scale that would take months to fully address—and that tested the resilience of glass operations in some of Florida's fastest-growing communities.

Tony Padula, president of A+ Auto Glass & Calibrations in Fort Myers, had prepared for Hurricane Ian with on-site generators but found that the path back to normal operations was blocked not by power failure but by logistics: distributors were not initially able to deliver safely through debris-covered roads and damaged stoplights.

Pilkington was reportedly the first distributor to resume deliveries to A+ Auto Glass, with Mygrant Glass following quickly thereafter. Padula credited both distributors with outstanding communication and proactive routing decisions that prioritized technician safety. When mobile deliveries resumed, Padula opted to focus on in-shop service rather than mobile—a decision he described as necessary given road conditions in the Fort Myers area.

The post-hurricane mix of work was roughly 60% windshield and laminated glass and 40% tempered glass—reflecting the range of vehicle damage from debris impact, tree contact and wind. Most customers were dealing with tree-related damage rather than body damage, which kept the work squarely in the auto glass shop's competency rather than collision repair.

For shops in hurricane-prone markets, the Ian experience reinforced several preparedness lessons: generator capability, pre-established distributor emergency contacts, an inventory buffer of the most common replacement SKUs, and flexibility to shift from mobile to in-shop service when road conditions demand it. Shops that had these elements in place were typically resuming service within days; those that had not took longer and lost customers to competitors who could deliver faster.

Key Takeaways

  • •Hurricane Ian's September 28 landfall created a major glass replacement surge in southwest Florida—with logistics and road conditions proving as challenging as the work volume itself.
  • •Shops with generators, distributor emergency protocols, and buffer inventory resumed service within days; under-prepared operations took significantly longer.
  • •Storm-related glass work skews approximately 60% laminated/windshield and 40% tempered, with tree and debris damage as the dominant cause rather than collision.