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Official: Charley's Death Toll to Climb [Stacks Of Bodies at Mobile Home Park]
Yahoo News ^ | 8/14/04 | ALLEN G. BREED,

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.



TOPICS: Breaking News; News/Current Events; US: Florida
KEYWORDS: charley; hurricane; hurricanecharley; hurricanedeaths; hurricanes; weatherdeaths; weatherevents
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To: Howlin

Thanks. You made this a positive thread.


161 posted on 08/14/2004 5:55:47 AM PDT by ican'tbelieveit
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To: kattracks

Thank you for all the reports. Still no word from friends/family who live in Port Charlotte.


162 posted on 08/14/2004 5:55:56 AM PDT by weatherFrEaK (Who, me?)
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To: dfwgator

Exactly right.

This has been an ugly thread, IMO, with a bunch of people who don't know what their talking about and aren't in the path of these storms shooting off their mouths.


163 posted on 08/14/2004 5:56:32 AM PDT by Howlin (Kerry being called a war hero is "a colloquialism.")
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To: Amelia

"If they wait until they know exactly where these things are going to hit, it's too late to get everyone out."

That's right. Especially anyone who lives in the Keys down below the 7 mile bridge - I've seen pics of that thing when everyone tries to get out. Talk about gridlock.
We had one storm in Ft. Lauderdale when I was still in Jr High school -can't remember the name of it but it went past us without hitting anything, we were all sure it was heading north and the dang thing backed up came right down on us. Luckily it was not a bad one compared to some of the others.


164 posted on 08/14/2004 5:57:07 AM PDT by mean lunch lady (Sometimes- the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train.)
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To: ican'tbelieveit
I am not trying to blame anyone today. I am feeling sorrow for the losses involved in this. To do otherwise is coldhearted.

I replied to you because you said on this thread that the people in the Punta Gorda area were not warned and were not told to evacuated.

That IS trying to assign blame, and it absolutely is not true, as you've been shown.

I feel sorrow for the losses involved as well. I was in that area, driving those streets, talking to some of those people not two weeks ago. All the same, they were warned.

165 posted on 08/14/2004 5:58:09 AM PDT by Amelia
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To: Rome2000
After Andrew, there were all kinds of rumors about hundreds dead in trailer parks in Perrine and Goulds. They weren't true, and hopefully this is the same situation.

That is my hope as well. When disasters such as this one strike, the scariest reports get the most play.

166 posted on 08/14/2004 5:58:26 AM PDT by solzhenitsyn ("Live Not By Lies")
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To: kattracks

Thanks for the update...Sanibel Island doesn't look too promising.


167 posted on 08/14/2004 5:58:32 AM PDT by mystery-ak (The most dangerous place in the world...between Moore and Ronstadt in the buffet line!)
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To: Howlin

Listening to the Local tv station down there. Florida Power and Light rep on the phone. Damage assessment has been completed. 650,000 without power across Florida.

No idea yet on when full restoration will occur.


168 posted on 08/14/2004 5:58:33 AM PDT by Rebelbase (Bush is Hell on liberals and terrorists.)
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To: Quilla

My daughter was chatting online with a friend in Punta Gorda til midnight when the friend's power went out. Then today we see it on the news....


169 posted on 08/14/2004 5:58:42 AM PDT by eccentric (aka baldwidow)
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To: Motherbear
No one deserves this, but as long as the federal government keeps insuring people to build and rebuild and rebuild in areas prone to this kind of damage, this is going to happen.

I remember John Stossel doing a special on that very subject a few years back. Government action creates artificial responses to natural phenomena.

ps. I just heard that another tropical storm -- probably will be named starting with letter 'E' is now building up off the coast of S America and is heading NW toward the Carribean where it will become a brand-new hurricane.
170 posted on 08/14/2004 5:59:12 AM PDT by walford (http://utopia-unmasked.us)
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To: Jet Jaguar

I drove through Homestead a few months after Andrew hit. The place still looked like Beirut. Awful amount of damage.

I have a sister who lives in Brandonton. Just moved there, in fact. I asked her if she was leaving, and she said no, because (1) it didn't seem that bad in the forecasts, and (2) the nearest place for them to move their dogs was Fayetteville, NC!

I obviously can't get a hold of her right now, but I'm hopeful everything is alright there.

CA....


171 posted on 08/14/2004 5:59:22 AM PDT by Chances Are (Whew! It seems I've once again found that silly grin!)
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To: Amelia
Yes, most of my family lives near Florence SC. I went up there less than a week after Hugo hit, and it made quite an impression.

I spent a year or so up in Florence after Hugo working for a remodeling contractor. The damage made quite an impression on me too.

172 posted on 08/14/2004 5:59:28 AM PDT by Vigilantcitizen (Have a burger and a beer and enjoy your liquid vegetables.)
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To: Rome2000

To this day you can asks rescue service and the police in this area about the deaths from Andrew. They will tell you it was much higher, MUCH higher than is reported as the official death toll.

The Homestead area then, and to this day, has migrant work camps, many who are there are illegals. Some of these camps were destroyed with the people in them. It was not reported.

When I first heard about this I thought it was just an urban legend until I was shown pictures of dead bodies that were found after the storm. I've also talked to enough people who claim to have seen the bodies being removed, or who helped remove the bodies, to not question these stories anymore.


173 posted on 08/14/2004 6:00:32 AM PDT by Brytani (Stop, hey, what's that sound, it's just John Kerry flip-flopping around!!!)
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To: RedBloodedAmerican; My Favorite Headache

Hope everything is alright with y'all.


174 posted on 08/14/2004 6:00:50 AM PDT by Vigilantcitizen (Have a burger and a beer and enjoy your liquid vegetables.)
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To: Chances Are

I was there in Homestead too a few months after, drove past literally miles of stacked up debris that had placed there during the cleanup, I'll never forget that as long as I live.


175 posted on 08/14/2004 6:01:26 AM PDT by dfwgator (It's sad that the news media treats Michael Jackson better than our military.)
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To: Amelia

And I was only repeating what Freepers told me yesterday when I asked if this area had been warned about leaving. I get so frustrated coming on threads like this and reading how stupid people were not to leave, how stupid families were for allowing their loved ones to stay, how stupid people are for living there to begin with.

I came to this thread to find information, not the above. I only mentioned that the media made it seem this storm would take a much different path, and that may be why some people chose to stay.

And there are some God posters on FR that feel no one should post on this thread except those from FL or if they are in total agreement with them. Just because my state says CO, doesn't mean I am not affected by this. Of course, assuming explains a lot.


176 posted on 08/14/2004 6:03:04 AM PDT by ican'tbelieveit
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To: Brytani

We live in what locals would call a "hurricane house" (i.e. it's a sturdy older house on stilts) and you can bet your behind that I'd be out of here for anything stronger than a cat 1 storm under normal circumstances. This year, with an infant, I was seriously considering leaving until it appeared clear that we were going to get tropical storm conditions at worst.

The entire west coast was under a hurricane warning. Anyone in a mobile home that stayed was tragically wrong.


177 posted on 08/14/2004 6:03:44 AM PDT by LBelle
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To: Rebelbase

Do you have any idea where this thing is going to come on shore today?


178 posted on 08/14/2004 6:04:33 AM PDT by Howlin (Kerry being called a war hero is "a colloquialism.")
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To: Chances Are

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.


179 posted on 08/14/2004 6:07:04 AM PDT by Brytani (Stop, hey, what's that sound, it's just John Kerry flip-flopping around!!!)
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To: mystery-ak

Live news feed from Charlotte County :
http://waterbc.wm.llnwd

Helicopter shots are showing a lot of destruction.

All three hospitals in Charlotte County are inoperable. Two of them had their roofs ripped off. Patients being sent to other counties.

Charlotte County Airport inoperable.


180 posted on 08/14/2004 6:07:15 AM PDT by Rebelbase (Bush is Hell on liberals and terrorists.)
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