Posted on 08/13/2004 10:08:09 AM PDT by Jeff400000
Are you in the path of the storm? Has it gone by you yet?
About at Winter Haven now.....
Halfway through Polk County, on line for DisneyWorld.
What do you want to bet, if it clobbers Orlando/Kissimmee, 90% of teh coverage is going to be on Mickey Mouse?
And the networks consider themselves "journalists" !!!!!!!
The Orlando TV weather guy just said Orlando area residents could expect 50-60 mph winds. Going over land will slow it down, but I think it will still retain most of its shape by the time it gets to the Atlantic.
Absolutely too late. There was a big fatal accident on the beeline (528) @ 520 jct when a thunderstorm (poss tornado) blew a trailer truck across the highway. 2 deaths. Stay put! hunker down. No way you would be safer in a car than in a building (mostly).
The first few hours after Andrew was a sequence of "it doesn't look that bad" and "bullet dodged" in the media, as it was easier to report from the less damaged areas, and most of the media had set up north of Miami. The "Oh S*** didn't happen till after someone took a chopper flight south of Miami the next morning.
National Guard enroute from Miami
THE NEWS-PRESS
Published by news-press.com on August 13, 2004
A 257-member National Guard soldier battallion from Miami will be on their way to Southwest Florida tonight as the clean-up from Hurricane Charley gets underway. Their tasks will be assigned once more damage assessments are complete.
The Sheriff's Office is asking people to avoid traveling on the roads at this time so safety and utility crews as well as emergency responders can perform their respective duties effectively. Deputies are reporting that drivers are not stopping at intersections where traffic lights are not operational. This is causing a traffic hazard and delays for emergency personnel responding to calls for service and assessing safety issues.
Lee County Emergency Medical Services began responding around 6 p.m. to calls in downtown Fort Myers and in east Lee County, spokesman Paul Filla said.Winds in Cape Coral and other parts were still too strong to allow EMS crews to respond.
The service prioritized calls as they came in during the storm so the most serious calls could be tackled first.
EMS received 34 calls between 3:15 and 6 p.m. Most were personal injuries and car accidents. There were two reports of women giving birth during the storm including one at Germain Arena and one at Dunbar High School shelter.
...Damage reports starting to come in ...
Trees in Volusia have fallen over...one fell on cell phone tower...
"Just like a ral hurricane?"
May do you mean "just like" .....
It IS a real hurricane right now! 8<)
I'm south of the path in southern brevard co. (palm bay) we've had trace rain so far but getting some wind now. We'll be spared the worst but there are always those godless tornadoes that come in the spinoff bands.
Regarding your family in JAX, FL. I live just north of there - we don't have anything yet just an all day non-Charlie related rain. Unless they live in a trailer, they should be fine. The main concern around here is the tornados that will spring up. Most of the Chalrie damage will be south of here, at least according to the current story.
We had a thunder and lightening storm last Tuesday night it was nasty. Anyway my husband was up and hysterical at 11pm saying that I should get the baby and we should go down to the family room, I ignored him of course. Then he went to the refrigerator and started eating. Needless to say my mother was hysterical laughing, the baby woke up and was crying my nine year old was crying. I told my husband not to take my job away and that is I AM THE NUT OF THE HOUSE WHO PANICS! I told him worry about the nukes that are hidden not the lightening!
More like 80 sustained with gusts to 100 mph. I don't live there but I have a meteorologist friend in FL who considers all of the Orlando TV mets complete idiots. One on them is with a station that's an Accuweather station, and Accuweather completely and totally botched the storm.
Donna Theisen of North Fort Myers, who was at a friend's house with 20 other people off Diplomat Parkway in Cape Coral, is trying to find out whether her home on a canal is left. Looking out the window, she said: "Cape Coral looks like a war zone." There are roofs blown off houses, trees down, pool cages that are nowhere to be found. Theisen said she is frantic to tour the damage in her own neighborhood.
Pine Island Road
Buildings with partially torn roofs, demolished signs over businesses, a flipped trailer and non-working stoplights provided a destructive path along PIne Island Road in the aftermath of Hurricane Charley on Saturday evening.
A caravan of 13 Lee County Sheriff's vehicles were touring PIne Island Road, assessing the damage. Cape police were directing traffic at the corner of Pine Island Road and Del Prado where a travffic light dangled just four feet above the street.
A trailer at business Water 911 was flipped over with its wheels in the air.
West of Chiquita Blvd. on Pine Island Road, firefighters were directing cars away from a power line that hung diagnally above the road, A palm tree had snapped in half and crashed into a power line transformer.
All traffic lights in Cape Coral and North Fort Myers were not working.
Water levelsWater levels in Southwest Cape Coral were rising high enough to flood streets and overflow fresh and saltwater canals as Hurricane Charley started to leave the area about 6 p.m.. Streets were quickly becoming impassible.
An entire row of power poles were down at in the corner of Gleason and Skyline.
Emergency workers and police were dirivng around the area, assessing damage.
Residents also were venturing out on the roadways and cars were getting stuck in the flooded roads.
Cape Coral Hospital lost power, city water and suffered structural damage just past 4 p.m. Friday as Hurricane Charley barreled through the city packing 90 mph wind gusts.
Part of the roof at the hospital’s plant operations building was torn off. But that was an outbuilding and doesn’t affect patients or staff, said hospital spokeswoman Karen Krieger.
The hospital has emergency generators for power and had supplies of water delivered prior to the storm, Krieger said.
The water problem will also affect more than 30,000 customers of the city’s utility system.
The Cape was forced to shut down the generator for its reverse osmosis plant which supplies water to residents.
“Water pressure is very low or non-existent,” said city spokeswoman Connie Barron.
The plant will be restarted when the storm passes and residents should have water.
There was a report of a tornado touching down at 1941 Southwest 6th Avenue, but no emergency personnel are planning to go out until at least 5:30 or 6 p.m., Barron said.
It was also reported that two palm trees were uprooted and sent flying through the air on the 900 block of SE 27th St., located south of Veterans Parkway.
The lake near Gerhart Plate’s Southwest 10th Ave. home was “as big as an ocean” thanks to Hurricane Charley.
“I’ve never seen that water so big,” said the Cape Coral resident.
The water was creeping over his seawall but had not yet reached his house as the storm continued to slam the city at about 4:30 p.m.
Half the roof had been ripped off his neighbors’ house. Plate thought another neighbor’s screened lanai had been dragged into the lake.
Wind gusts of up to 90 miles per hour ravaged the neighborhood.
“The trees are bare,” Plate said. “We have some trees collapsing into the water.”
On-the-water preparations
On Friday morning, Bobby Russ and his two sons hurriedly drilled plywood over the windows of their Lenox Court house near the Caloosahatchee River.
Once they were finished, they planned to head to higher ground in northern Cape Coral where they hope Hurricane Charley’s storm surge won’t be a problem.
“It’s the smart thing to do,” said Russ, 45, as he took a break from drilling. “I’m pretty much going to get out of its way.”
Cape Coral officials felt the same way, and Friday morning they asked Russ and other residents of low-lying Cape Coral neighborhoods to seek higher — and safer — ground.
Not everyone was taking that advice, though.
Clark Wallo, 82, lowered the metal storm shutters on his Dolphin Drive house and stored documents and other important papers and valuables onto higher places. He was going to hunker down and wait out Charley.
A 15-year resident, Wallo said he’s never had a problem with flooding.
“I’m not too worried, really,” he said.
“But if the water starts coming into the house, we’re leaving.”
Meanwhile, at the Cape Coral Yatch Club, David Mackey completed last-minute checks on their houseboat.
Mackey was going to ride out the storm with his wife and 8-week-old infant aboard their boat — unless conditions worsened.
“We put lines on the boat from here to Kingdom Come,” said Mackey, 36.
If they have to, Mackey said he, his wife and his 8-week-old infant will go and stay with a friend. But he hopes it doesn’t come to that. He wants to stay with his boat so he can let out the lines, if need be.
“It’s a waiting game,” Mackey said. “The boat’s our home. If we lose it, we’re in trouble.”
I can never tell if you're kidding........LOL.
True - however it is still light here and flights have been over the area. If there would've been devestration anywhere close to Andrew - I'd suspect we'd know by now.
I've never seen one keep an defined eye this long....and LOOK like it looked when it was out in the ocean.
Uh yes...I would listen to the reports here before some ding dong that was hired to look good to read the weather...
reports of trees crashing onto mobile homes in Volusia County as squall line hits.
My brother lives in San Carlos Park, a little southwest of Lehigh Acres.
Amazingly, he got thru to me a couple of hours ago via cell phone.
He has no power and no water, some bent-up trees and a few missing shingles. But he has a portable generator that he'll turn on later.
But he says his neighborhood looks fairly good.
An Orlando talking head just said that the evacuation shelter that had its roof blown off is in DeSoto County, over 1,000 people in the shelter.
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