Urban rescue teams have completed two of three needed searches for survivors and victims of Hurricane Ian on Fort Myers Beach, Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said at a Thursday afternoon news conference. 

But while residents are grateful for the rescue operations, some say the Lee County Sheriff's Office is restricting supplies, forcing them to leave homes they fear will be demolished or looted in their absence. Marceno denies this, but rumors and fear have run rampant.

Just nine looting arrests had been made across the county as of Thursday. Sheriff's office staff insist Fort Myers Beach residents should evacuate. 

If a resident refuses and insists on staying, they must shelter in place or be escorted to evacuate, for their safety and to help rescuers get an accurate count, the office explained. 

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Residents both on and off the island on Thursday said they struggled to understand why they were faced with a difficult choice: stay inside without new resources or leave behind everything not taken by the storm.

Fort Myers Beach, so close to San Carlos Island it seems almost in reach, is inaccessible to unapproved visitors. It is a study in the tension between a community processing the trauma of the storm and a municipality navigating the aftermath of devastation.

"They have to work with us," Marceno said Thursday. "As soon as possible, I want to get back to the new norm. If they're in their home now on the island, they have to shelter in place."

Urban rescue teams expect to finish the last pass by Saturday, Marceno said, which would be a necessary step to reopening the island. 

Dom Cece is 80 years old. He’s seen a few things in his time. Riding out Hurricane Ian on Fort Myers Beach was the most horrific thing he’s ever lived through.

He had to fight for his life climbing a ladder one rung at a time amidst what he says were 15-foot-high waves and powerful winds.

Now, Cece says he and other residents aren't getting the help for local authorities they need. In fact, he said, they're deliberately withholding help in order to get him and other residents off the island.

"They're starving us out," he told The News-Press. "Well, I'm not leaving. I have business here, I have property I have to protect." 

It's not yet clear whether Lee County Sheriff's Office has decided to use this tactic to force people to evacuate the island.

Marceno's office vehemently denied a policy to "starve out" residents of Fort Myers Beach. But rumors of the "starve out" plan grew in the vacuum of other assistance. Dangerous conditions on the island means that groups like the American Red Cross had limited access to bring in supplies. 

Three residents who spoke to The News-Press reported they heard uniformed law enforcement used the phrase "starve out." But the significant law enforcement presence on the island includes teams from across the state and region and the three shared different recollections of the uniforms of officers they met. 

Cece hopes he can live until the weekend on canned goods he had stored, as well as some shared by neighbors. He's worried if he tries to go pick up more of the supplies his neighbors left for him, he'll be escorted off the island. 

One man, Chris Dolce, a Broward County resident, took it upon himself to set up a truck on the south end of the island. 

He brought gas, generators, cook tops and other supplies and created a gathering point at a plaza in town.

"I knew there's got to be people down there who need help and you know, they need people. The more people the better," he said. He would have stayed longer if they'd let him. 

Fort Myers Beach residents Leeanna Parsons, 51, and Joe McEneaney, 59, called him their "angel." 

"I call him Saint Christopher," McEneaney said. 

The pair helped coordinate medical responses and welfare checks on their neighbors, usually gathering at first light near where Dolce had set up and then met back there in the evening for dinner and another phone charge as the sun set. 

With their connections with local business owners, they also organized getting unused food and supplies from restaurants and other places out to people who needed it. 

"'There's nothing left in there but top shelf stuff,'" McEneaney said a bar owner told him, laughing about the height of the flood waters, "'but you're welcome to any of it.' But mostly, it was them saying to grab food and water.

"I wouldn't I wouldn't say that's looting. I would say that's surviving. Right? Nobody's walking around stealing Gucci bags."

Turning more serious, Parsons said she felt she and the rest of their "beach family" were working as a community to help each other. She was devastated to have to evacuate but said they needed medications and other supplies that were not allowed to be delivered across the blockade. 

When it became clear they would have to shelter in place or be escorted to evacuate, the couple decided to leave the island. 

"What good could we do if we were being forced to stay inside our home?" she wondered. 

Reach reporter Mariah Timms at mtimms@tennessean.com or 615-259-8344 and on Twitter @MariahTimms.