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.
Hmm I guess i should warn anyone in the Myrtle Beach area to watch out then. MY Brother is on his way to Myrtle today for the Dupont World Amatuer Golf Tournament. IN the last ten years he has brought at least 5 TS's or Hurricanes into the area with him. LOL
It is a standing joke in our family. We find out when the Dupont is and when MY Brother is going up there, and then pencil in that the area will have a Storm of some type right before or during that week.
We've lived in Florida for 30 years, and a few of those years were spent in a mobile home, and others were spent in a coastal area. Mobile homes have always -- always -- been the first to be warned to evacuate if a storm is anywhere in the vicinity.
After mobile homes, those living in coastal areas are told to leave. We, family and friends have been through so many evacuations/preparations that we can't even count. We may b--ch and grumble after the storm passes, but no one I know is so stupid as to wait and see before making a decision.
If Andrew's devastation didn't teach people how storms can make sudden moves, then nothing can -- and to suggest that governments are responsible for making decisions for people is to advocate the nanny state.
The loss of life is tragic, but it was avoidable.
Thank you for the lightening up this tragic day - menagerie - LOL.
The media is trying to spin this as a political move by President Bush.
I haven't heard anything about the damage on Boca Grande (Gasparilla Island). Do you or anyone have any info?
Captiva and Sanibel...water not safe to drink and do not turn on generators. (crews working on the grid)
Captiva has been split into...a new 400 yard wide pass has been created.
"I tied it(boat) up real good and put out some fenders but I was just kidding myself about it being safe if we had a direct hit."
Hopefully your boat is still intact. Everytime I see the power of wind and water it amazes me to no end. Mother Nature is mind boggling. Unfortunetly for many boat owners I bet those ropes snapped like cheap sewing thread.
I haven't read through the thread yet, but does anyone know of any damage in Venice, just a few miles to the north? Specifically the Plantations? My mother lives there and has many elderly friends who stayed there. My mother is here in Indiana at the moment so she was out of harms way.
Moderators should just add an "unconfirmed" tag and/or move the post to discussion when major unconfirmed breaking news is reported that is by it's very nature unconfirmed. Otherwise the strength of FR is diluted.
Apparently the poster was trying to add a video report to the post when he was banned. I imagine that blogs will eventually overtake FR because of anal moderators.
I don't remember. We had the news on nonstop cause we're in Jax in NE FL. I know they told Pinellas county and N of there in areas which would receive surge but I don't know about Punta. The storm track changed by an hour, iow, we were supposed to have the eye pass over us 'but' when it changed track, it passed to the south of us by an hour and went over St. Augustine & Daytona Beach before going back to sea. That may not seem like a very big difference but for us we had low level winds and rain compared to the 75-90 mph winds plus possible tornadoes they had been telling us to prepare for.
Realize it is a long way out, but just noticed that NHC has TD 5 tracking right along the same path as Charley south of Cuba on thier 5 day forecast.
It's a good idea to get out of there early. Even on "normal" days, a simple accident on Rt. 1 make movement in/out of the Key impossible. If this thing looks like it's going to get close to us (which it does) you might want to start going to see Grandma early in the week!!!
I distictly remember the laeftist press reports of the poor storm victims blaminmg Bush. But, I though the president had waited several days before acting. Pre-FR days, so I was still getting my news from ABCNBCCBS.
Wish I had known this before booking my vacation to Myrtle Beach :-) Was suppose to leave this morning. Hoping to leave tomorrow...
Well I think it does sound crude to have stacked them but we don't know what the area is like either.There is bound to be tons of debri, electrical lines down may not be a problem if the power is out there. If there are that many dead (just read min. 60) there may not be a large area to lay them out individually.
right now Grandma is without power from Charley's visit. She is in Palm Coast. No other damage, thankfully. My husband thinks I am being hysterical, but that one feeder band we got late Thursday/ early Friday convinced me that I don't want to experience a hurricane, even in my strong house. My wild and crazy adrenaline days are over.
Prayers for all.
NO, IT DOESN'T!!
IT LOOKS LIKE A CAT4 HURRICANE JUST CAME THROUGH THERE!............
The one time I've left (hurricane Floyd that didn't hit us but looked awful) I packed up both dogs, 5 cats and two birds and headed to my parents house N. of me.
When we went through the un-named storm and the one that hit us in 1999 (can't remeber the name of it to save my life) I kept the dogs inside until it was safe for them to go out. I figured if they made a mess in the house, it was better then having them die. 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.
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