Swimming champ Diana Nyad brings attention to rebuilding after Hurricane Irma

Swimming champion Diana Nyad spent the week in Key West helping rebuild homes in the Florida Keys region hardest hit by Hurricane Irma nearly seven months ago.

Nyad, who in 2013 famously swam 110 miles in 53 hours from Cuba to Key West, learned to use power tools with her team of 18 volunteers working on three homes on Big Pine Key.

“I would hope that someone would come and help me if I had lost that much,” Nyad said Saturday during a meet-and-greet at The Gardens Hotel to benefit Habitat for Humanity.

“That’s what Habitat does,” she said. “They step up, if FEMA isn’t quite right there yet for you to help you get that trailer to live in while your home is devastated, Habitat is going to come in and try to fill the gap.”

While Key West was largely unscathed by Irma, parts of the Lower and Middle Keys continue to recover from the storm, which struck Sept. 10.

“There’s a lot of folks still living in RVs, trailers, tents or bunking with families,” said Susan Kent, program director for Habitat for Humanity of Key West and the Lower Florida Keys. Thirty homeowners on Big Pine have applied for Habitat assistance.

“There are way more than that who need help,” Kent said. “Our biggest need is for volunteers.”

“Those families cried, we cried together,” Nyad said, giving all the credit for her five days of volunteering to Habitat. “They saw our eyes saying I know if my home went down, you’d be there for me.”

Nyad on Saturday also promoted her “Everwalk” campaign, which aims to get one million people in the U.S. walking for exercise.

Nyad has planned walks across the nation, but Key West, where she trained for four summers before becoming the first person to make the Cuba-to-Key West swim without the aid of a shark cage, is where she and her crew will visit annually for volunteer work.

“We’re going to come back to Key West every year,” she said.

This story was originally published April 7, 2018 at 6:22 PM with the headline "Swimming champ Diana Nyad brings attention to rebuilding after Hurricane Irma."