Posted on 08/14/2004 1:42:49 AM PDT by kattracks
PUNTA GORDA, Fla. - The death toll from Hurricane Charley rose early Saturday, when a county official said there had a been "a number of fatalities" at a mobile home park and deputies were standing guard over stacks of bodies because the area was inaccessible to ambulances.Wayne Sallade, Charlotte County's director of emergency management, said early Saturday that there were "a number of fatalities" at the mobile home park, and that there were confirmed deaths in at least three other areas in the county.
The eye of the worst hurricane to hit Florida in a dozen years passed directly over Punta Gorda, a town of 15,000 which took a devastating hit Friday.
Hundreds of people were missing and more were left homeless, said Sallade, who compared the devastation to 1992's Hurricane Andrew, blamed for 43 deaths, most in South Florida.
"It's Andrew all over again," he said. "We believe there's significant loss of life."
Sallade did not have an estimate on a specific number of fatalities. He said it may take days to get a final toll.
Extensive damage was also reported on exclusive Captiva Island, a narrow strip of sand west of Fort Myers.
President Bush (news - web sites) declared a major disaster area in Florida, making federal money available to Charlotte, Lee, Manatee and Sarasota counties. One million customers were reported without power statewide, including all of Hardee County and Punta Gorda.
The Category 4 storm was stronger than expected when the eye reached the mainland at Charlotte Harbor, pummeling the coast with winds reaching 145 mph and a surge of sea water of 13 to 15 feet.
Charley was forecast to spread sustained winds of about 40 mph to 60 mph across inland portions of eastern North Carolina and to dump 3 to 6 inches of rain beginning Saturday morning, forecasters said. Gov. Mike Easley declared a state of emergency.
In South Carolina, roads clogged Friday night as tourists and residents of the state's Grand Strand — beaches and high-dollar homes and hotels — heeded a mandatory evacuation order. Gov. Mark Sanford had urged voluntary evacuation earlier Friday.
At Charlotte Regional Medical Center in Punta Gorda, 40 people sought treatment for storm injuries. The hospital was so badly damaged that patients were transferred to other hospitals.
"We can't keep patients here," CEO Josh Putter said. "Every roof is damaged, lots of water damage, half our windows are blown out."
Among those seeking treatment was Marty Rietveld, showered with broken glass when the sliding glass door at his home was smashed by a neighbor's roof that blew off. Rietveld broke his leg, and his future son-in-law suffered a punctured leg artery.
"We are moving," said Rietveld's daughter, Stephanie Rioux. "We are going out of state."
At least 20 patients with storm injuries were reported at a hospital in Fort Myers.
A crash on Interstate 75 in Sarasota County killed one person, and a wind gust caused a truck to collide with a car in Orange County, killing a young girl. A man who stepped outside his house to smoke a cigarette died when a banyan tree fell on him in Fort Myers, authorities said.
At the Charlotte County Airport, wind tore apart small planes, and one flew down the runway as if it were taking off. The storm spun a parked pickup truck 180 degrees, blew the windows out of a sheriff's deputy's car and ripped the roof off an 80-foot-by 100-foot building.
Martin said he saw homes ripped apart at two trailer parks.
"There were four or five overturned semi trucks — 18-wheelers — on the side of the road," he said.
In Desoto County outside Arcadia, several dead cows, wrapped in barbed wire, littered the roadside.
The hurricane rapidly gained strength in the Gulf of Mexico after crossing Cuba and swinging around the Florida Keys as a more moderate Category 2 storm Friday morning. An estimated 1.4 million people evacuated in anticipation of the strongest hurricane to strike Florida since Andrew in 1992.
Charley reached landfall at 3:45 p.m. EDT, when the eye passed over barrier islands off Fort Myers and Punta Gorda, some 110 miles southeast of the Tampa Bay area.
Charley hit the mainland 30 minutes later, with storm surge flooding of 10 to 15 feet, the hurricane center said. Nearly 1 million people live within 30 miles of the landfall.
The state put 5,000 National Guard soldiers and airmen on alert to help deal with the storm, but only 1,300 had been deployed by Friday night, a state emergency management spokeswoman said.
At a nursing center in Port Charlotte, Charley broke windows and ripped off portions of the roof, but none of the more than 100 residents or staff was injured, administrator Joyce Cuffe said.
"The doors were being sucked open," Cuffe said. "A lot of us were holding the doors, trying to keep them shut, using ropes, anything we could to hold the doors shut. There was such a vacuum, our ears and head were hurting."
At 2 a.m. EDT, the center of the storm was in the Atlantic Ocean, about 190 miles south-southwest of Charleston, S.C., and moving north-northeast at 25 mph. Forecasters expected Charley to increase in speed. Maximum sustained winds were near 85 mph with higher gusts.
The center was expected to approach the South Carolina coast Saturday morning. A hurricane warning remained in effect from Cocoa Beach, northward to Oregon Inlet, N.C., and a tropical storm warning was in effect on the North Carolina and Virginia Coasts north of Oregon Inlet to Chincoteague, including the lower Chesapeake Bay south of Smith Point.
Spared the worst of the storm was the Tampa Bay area, where about a million people had been told to leave their homes. Some drove east, only to find themselves in the path of the Charley.
"I feel like the biggest fool," said Robert Angel of Tarpon Springs, who sought safety in a motel. "I spent hundreds of dollars to be in the center of a hurricane. Our home is safe, but now I'm in danger."
The fourth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, Danielle, formed Friday but posed no immediate concern to land. The fifth may form as early as Saturday and threaten islands in the southeastern Caribbean Sea.
___
Associated Press writers Mark Long in Fort Myers, Ken Thomas in Key West, Mitch Stacy and Brendan Farrington in Tampa, Vickie Chachere in Sarasota, Mike Branom and Mike Schneider in Orlando and Bruce Smith in Charleston, S.C., contributed to this report.
Also, rode out Hurricane Elena in the VEQ at Keesler in 85.
Re: landfall...I'm guessing Somewhere around Myrtle?...Wilmington would be the farthest north landfall.
He already did
He was on the news earlier
I am only going by what I heard on the newscast and from talking to my uncle yesterday before they left the Indian Rock area.
you don't know how relieved I am to hear that you don't have a cousin in Islamorada!
:-)
My goodness! Give your daughter a hug for me and let her know that we're praying for her friend and all those in Punta Gorda.
Bush declared the entire area a Federal Disaster area within 2 hours of landfall, has opened up the Fed Coffers already and had FEMA official on thier way down last night. He has not made the same mistake his father did.
Absolutely not. The specific claim I made was that the report of deputies "guarding stacks of bodies" sounded like an exaggeration, and when asked, I explained why I thought so. I still suspect it was an exaggeration, no matter how often it's been repeated in the news.
Time will tell.
If the report was exaggerated, I wish they hadn't done that. Hard to see how it could have been comforting to people worried about their loved ones.
I was in Tampa, FL in fall 1968 in a terrible hurricane..don't remember the name of it, I remember sweeping water through first floor and palm tree in front yard being ripped up by roots...I left shortly after Hurricane deciding I would never live in Florida again...I was only there four months...but I was in a brick building. That was enough for me.
I don't like having to pack up and evacuate....I don't live in Midwest because of tornadoes and twisters...but now we are getting those things here on rare occasions.
Prayers for those who lost family, homes, possessions. Hope everyone hears from relatives and friends today and Florida recuperates fast.
The hard part only lasts a few minutes, then it's all over.
" You just hit on one of the biggest reasons why people will not evacuate and go to a shelter. Their animals. There are no shelters that will allow a person to take their pets, and many people, especially the elderly, will not leave them behind. "
Unfortunetly that is true because there is no where or no way for the animals to relieve themselves over long hours stuck inside shelters. During tornado threat when my family had to go into a storm bunker we made sure our outdoor dogs were not tied up so they could gage for themselves where to run. It's all we could do, they always came out unharmed. Just like some farmers cut their animals loose. Sometimes animals natural extincts for survival are better than ours.
Remember that guy named Harry Truman who refused to evacuate from Spirit Lake when he was warned Mount St. Helens was about to blow up? That sort of "I will go down with the ship" attitude was common among older people in Charleston before Hugo. I guess if you live on your property for 30 or 40 years and you get quite attached (I would ride out anything up to a Category 3 myself - a 4 or 5 and I'm out of here).
Most of those people evacuate on every warning now. They survived Hugo and learned a lesson they won't forget. I hope none of those unfortunate people in the trailer park died because they had never learned that lesson. I have to say I think not, as I cannot imagine anyone being that emotionally attached to a trailer park.
I fear they may have decided "I will ride out a Category 3 hitting Tampa, 75 miles away." People hate to leave their homes and it is even harder when your mobility is limited or if you have belongings or pets you refuse to leave behind. You will take quite a risk before going through the trauma of evacuation. Sadly, by the time they knew it was a Category 4 hitting them head on, it may have been too late.
Florida has the largest elder population of any state and I think the largest pop of those over 86.
EMERGENCY NOTICES:
- Lee Memorial Health Systems says its emergency department and intensive care unit needs physicians at all three hospitals. If you can help, call the command center at 334-5098.
- Area hospitals are being flooded with patients who have sustained very minor injuries, and some with non-emergency conditions. These individuals need to wait until physician offices or urgent care centers are open. Please do not come to area hospital emergency departments if your condition is not a true emergency.
Charlotte death toll rising
The death toll from Hurricane Charley is rising this morning. Charlotte County Director of Emergency Management Wayne Sallade says there are "a number of fatalities" at a mobile home park in Punta Gorda where residents ignored evacuation orders. Sallade says deputies were standing guard over bodies because the area was inaccessible to ambulances.
Sallade says hundreds of people are missing in Charlotte County and thousands were left homeless. He didn't have an estimate of the number of fatalities and says it might take days to get a final toll.
Charlotte County officials say they have found bodies in four areas of the county. No one is releasing any numbers yet on the dead.
Curfews
Fort Myers and Cape Coral have instituted curfews from 11 pm Friday to 7 am Saturday for the safety of residents and clean-up crews. Collier County's curfew is in effect from 11 pm Friday to 6 am Saturday.
'Many' Fatalities Expected from Charley in Florida
PUNTA GORDA, Fla. (Reuters) - Rescuers expect to find "many" fatalities after mobile home parks were devastated by Hurricane Charley's rampage over southwest Florida, a local official said on Saturday.
Bob Carpenter, a spokesman for the Charlotte County emergency management office, said it was too early to know how many people were killed by Charley, which slammed ashore on Friday afternoon.
"We just won't know until we can get in there (to the mobile home parks). Obviously we expect to have many (fatalities)," he said.
It sure did. I rode it out by myself with just the company of three cats. The scariest part was Civil Defense announcing that this is not a test ect...
I think he's already delcared it a disaster area. One online feed I was listening to last night said something about the declaration happened before the wind stopped blowing. Hopefully needed manpower and supplies will be just as efficient in arriving.
Actually, it was Cheney...
Upper Captiva: 160 Homes destroyed. 160 Homes damaged.
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