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.
of course, the rescue efforts and recovery of power and water are #1.
but citizens elect these people, pay taxes, and they want to have some sense that they are connected to what is happening.
President Bush should certainly give it a few days, but at some point, it would be foolish and political suicide not to go.
Actually I think there are a lot of reasons that older people don't evacuate. Some people mentioned pets ... but a lot of old people have no family, sometimes they are mentally impaired or have health issues.
It seems to me they should do that --- it wouldn't have to be all that big of a building because probably many do leave for safer places --- but for those who want to tough it out, there should be something.
"Unbelievably neither of them even so much as tinkled in the house, though by the time I opened the door to see if it was safe to let them out, their eyes were floating."
Awwww, glad to read your pets made it okay. Poor babies really made the effort not to potty in the home.
Good for you :)
It was a resident of the town.
Which is why Governor Bush is heading to the area today and I'm sure will be making many visits over the next few weeks to check on the citizens on his state.
If President Bush comes down, it should not be until disaster recovery is well underway when stopping EVERYTHING for a presidential visit will not be a problem as it would be for the next few weeks.
"Speaking of adrenaline jinkies.. How did Darwin Award Candidate NEWSBOY TODD make out. Last I heard his Van was being pelted with debris and he was watching the Holiday come apart in front of him, then his cell phone went out."
I have no idea .
You know, I had not thought of this til I read your post.
It would be a difficult thing for some folks to take off for an extended period of time. Maybe some folks stay just because they literally don't have the money to go anywhere else. Especially if these were elderly and living in a mh park. They weren't living in a gated community which would give the impression of having the financial capability to pick up and get out.
Granted there are always shelters available but you also have those 'old salties' in hurricane zones who will say "I've evacuated plenty of times and nothing happened so I'm staying put" and they will stay just because their own experience has convinced them it was a waste of time to leave.
It's very sad news indeed.
I was in Beaufort SC when Hugo went through. Scared me to death!
BY CHARLES RABIN, DARRAN SIMON AND AMY DRISCOLL
FORT MYERS
In Punta Gorda, a city of 15,000 where early reports indicated some of the worst damage, retiree Dalila Eljaua rode out the storm closeted in a bathroom with her two dogs as pieces of her roof flew off.
''It's true what they say: You've never heard that sound; you just are praying that it goes away, and every time it would slow down, it comes right back up,'' said Eljaua, who moved to Punta Gorda from Cooper City a month ago. 'You're thinking, `Oh God, when does this end?' ''
I've told my husband if my dogs had an accident in the house, the last thing we could do is get mad at them.
From being locked up for hours during storm to one time when hubby and I broke down on the turnpike heading home. We had planned on only being gone for 8-9 hours, instead it was almost 18 before we got home. We'd just moved to the area, didn't know our neighbors and had nobody to call to let them outside. I came home expecting a mess but they did nothing, not a drop.
I figure if an accident happens, they owe us....
One thing I learned about living in S. Florida. A person living in a mobile home park does not always mean they are low-income. Some of these parks go for a hefty amount of money.
We looked at a mobile home in Key Largo, $275k for a mobile home - and no, we didn't buy it...
Those are interesting stories. Every hurricane has different dynamics and the tornadoes embedded in Celia could have easily caused those gusts. The guy who measured the 161 (before the thing broke) also measured 28.64 inches or 964 mb which was not the worst of the storm (945 mb).
**Politicos can provide a bureaucratic kick in the ass to whatever state agency is needing motivation.**
I don't think anyone down that way is being complacent right now. After Andrew, "Walkin' Lawton" Chiles sat on his behind saying "shucky darn" until a woman in local government asked "where the Hell is the cavalry?" Now THAT was complacency. The locals in SW Fla appear to be asking for, and receiving, state and federal assistance fairly rapidly.
They were told to evacuate....they said "we're not going anywhere". I heard one of the residents defiantly saying that yesterday.
*We looked at a mobile home in Key Largo, $275k for a mobile home - and no, we didn't buy it...*
must have been a single-wide on a dry lot......
because up until 3-4 hours before landfall, the focus was all on the Tampa Bay area. I'm not faulting the forecasters, these things are unpredicatable, but there wasn't alot of pointed emphasis that a cat 4 was coming up charlotte harbor for a direct hit.
Well I'm sure it is terrible down there .. not like a war zone .. but from what I'm seeing in TV, it's pretty bad
"I've told my husband if my dogs had an accident in the house, the last thing we could do is get mad at them."
Exactly, how on earth could pets help themselves. I've seen toilet trained cats but never dogs. This year during our vacation my brother inlaw was our pet sitter but still he was gone all day at work. Our little dog escaped from his penned area made messes in the basement. We didn't get mad, I got the mop bucket and pinesol and cleaned it up. No big deal.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.