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.
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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.
"figure if an accident happens, they owe us...."
LOL, you have a very positive and humorous attitude about life. Don't ever change, you'll have a happier and longer life because of it. Two thumbs up.
"BTW, if we want to dedicate a thread for Floridians affected by this storm I have no problem with that ... we just need to label it as such. Many people are on this thread that don't live anywhere near it. Me, for instance, in Los Angeles.
I do not mean any disrespect by posting here but lets be clear if this is a private thread."
What is confusing about a thread talking about Hurricane Charley? If the article mentions a hurricane that hit Florida, most of us would probably assume that it's about the people in the path of the storm, not those out in LA. No disrespect intended, I just don't understand what was misleading about it.
"They were told to evacuate....they said "we're not going anywhere". I heard one of the residents defiantly saying that yesterday."
We saw an elderly male Floridian with same reply on the news yesterday too. He said he was seventy years old and he wasn't going anywhere. The impression we got was that he basically said, he's had a long healthy life, if a storm takes me out now at 70 yrs of age he doesn't care. What are ya gonna do. Different strokes different folks.
I think a lot of people will want to fault forecasters, some local officials included - but note for example from Charlotte County emergency center dispatches below (oldest at the bottom) that despite fact it was not cat 4, residents were advised to leave barrier islands on Thursday and everybody should be out of low areas by Friday am.
Charlotte County Emergency Bulletinsonly bulletins within the last 30 days appear
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If you run across a Charley thread without these know-it-all, keyboard cowboys on it, will you please ping me? I want to catch up on FReepers who have missing friends and family, but I just can't stomach the moronic statements. I wish the admins would allow a 'Moron-free Zone' thread to be posted.
Thanks for the info. I grew up in Ft. Lauderdale and have heard about those two major 'canes but have not really read up on them. It was of course, very sad that so many people lost their lives in those storms and that the mechanism for predicting hurricanes back then was so different from what we have now. It's also strange that they didn't even name them back then. I guess the only ones people talked about were the those that were so terrible no-one could forget them.
"Dammit. Was it in the triler park that the greatest ddamage and deaths occured? I suspect so."
Note to self: use the spell checker, moron.
triler = trailer
ddamage = damage
sheeesh!
My whole house shook. I could not get to sleep. And I have hurricane shutters.
Three blocks from water, single wide with a storage shed. This was about 4 years ago, I imagine that same trailor would probably sell for well over 300K now.
Toilet training dogs is not difficult, I've done it many times over. My dogs are used to going 8-9 hours from when I was working as well as going to school. Now that I'm just in school full-time, I manage to come home after about 6 hours to let them out.
If you look at my freeper page I've got pictures posted of them along with my cats. They're my babies...I'll admit it.
I can't imagine any community not calling for an evacuation of trailers with a storm heading toward their side of Florida. Even a near miss can be devastating for a trailer.
Heck, I can't imagine knowing a storm is on the way, living in a trailer and thinking that a cat. 1 or 2 wouldn't be a big deal, and that I could just go to sleep knowing it's on the way, knowing that it could veer or increase in strength at any time.
some hospital official on FNC now (by phone) - 150 DOA at local hospitals. very bad.
They did call for mandatory evacuations of mobile homes in the areas Charley hit. People didn't listen to the warnings, as is common when hurricanes are off our coast.
Fox news just interviewed a hospital official who said there were 100 to 150 DOAs last night. And that's not counting the stacks at the trailer parks.
Wow, that's awful.
You're right. People evacuated the Tampa area and headed east to Orlando, filling up all the hotels.
Charlie changed course and slammed smack into Kissimmee and Orlando.
I grew up in Texas and Oklahoma. Trailers are storm death magnets. I just cannot imagine living in one and not evacuating with a hurricane on the way.
well, I don't think its that common for people to ignore these - look at how many people fled the tampa bay region. and the barrier islands like Sanibel had almost 100%evacuations. but unfortunately, I think alot of the people that we now know were in the eye, thought it would be mostly a flooding event for them, as opposed to a direct hit from a cat 4.
Bizarre. People talk about things going on in the country. Not just things going on in the neighborhood ... although maybe only you talk about local matters. If the thread is closed ... and only people from Florida should be on the thread then state that. Otherwise free speech applies.
Holy crap! It looked bad on TV this morning at 5am, but I'm at work now and can only get cartoons on this unit w/ its own antenna.
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