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.
"It's Bush's [Jeb Bush's] fault" ?
Seriously. I expect by Monday Micheal Moore and Bill Maher et al will be "exposing" how Jeb was responsible (wasted 7 minutes when he heard about it; wanted to help get the Florida Bin Laden's out of the state first; more deaths mean more $ for his familiy's oil buddies because hearses get low gas-mileage; mean Republicans love carnage; yadayada.)
POSTED: 7:47 PM EDT August 13, 2004
UPDATED: 9:54 PM EDT August 13, 2004
CHARLOTTE:
-- Portions of roof ripped off, windows broken at Deep Creek Rehab and Nursing Center in Port Charlotte, according to administrator. No injuries.
-- Roof collapse at Fire Station No. 12.
-- Numerous trailer homes destroyed.
-- At Charlotte County Airport, winds tore apart small planes and blew out the windows of a sheriff's deputy's car. Hangers were collapsed and roofs were torn off buildings. The only building that did not suffer major damage was the Airport Authority building.
-- The roof of the county's emergency operations center in Punta Gorda also blew off.
COLLIER:
-- Officials said a "good portion" of the county was without power and there was some flooding. No serious reports of damage.
DESOTO:
-- Roof blown off at Turner Agri-Civic Center, a hurricane shelter where 1,200 people had gathered; no known injuries.
-- Large sections of U.S. 17 are peppered with down utility poles; some parts of the road completely blocked.
GLADES COUNTY:
-- Rural county on west side of Lake Okeechobee reported sporadic downed power lines, minor roof damage, trees down. Approximately 35 percent of the county without power.
HARDEE:
-- Entire county without power.
HIGHLANDS:
-- Several power lines down north of Sebring.
-- Tree fell through roof of apartment building in Sebring, injuries unknown
HILLSBOROUGH:
-- No damage reported, no power loss.
LEE:
-- Downed power lines, numerous downed trees and some roofs torn off by high wind.
-- A tornado touched down in southwest Cape Coral, damage still being assessed.
-- Cape Coral city hall sustained enough damage that employees hunkered down there and had to relocate to other parts of the building.
-- Cape Coral hospital sustained significant damage to parts of its roof, windows and doors. There were no injuries reported.
-- At least 118,000 customers were without power.
-- Eyewitness video showed the roof of a Fort Myers post office ripped off. Officials say no one was in the building.
-- One confirmed fatality in North Fort Myers, no further details.
MONROE COUNTY:
-- The Islander Resort on Islamorada suffered minor roof damage, but it was open Friday.
-- A sailboat separated from its mooring and its mast struck a main electrical transmission line, causing temporary power outages in parts of the lower Keys.
-- Minor street flooding reported.
PINELLAS:
-- No damage reported, no power loss.
POLK:
-- Amateur radio operator reports several mobile homes destroyed
I'm sure some lefty is thinking it. Global warming. Anti-environment GW. That sort of thing.
Though, I did see a post on DU where someone was trying to say that it was karma for Floridians because they stole the election. Those DU'ers are fine people, aren't they?
It's not YOUR fault the storm changed track, buddy.
August nights in the deep South usually mean LOWS of, say, 80.
I don't supposed they will just DROP this "global warming" fantasy?...I didn't think so.
I recently saw a cool bumper sticker that said "Stop Global Whining" LOL
A peek into the Democrat strategy session.
+++ Carville sits on the edge of the chair and glances around to all attendees. McCullough laughs nervously and Ickes smirks. "Okay," James begins, "we've got a major hurricane here, what can we do with it?"
"First," McCullough pipes up, having waited all day for this moment, "the hurrican was predicted to hit Tampa direct and it didn't. Instead, it hit elsewhere where they weren't quite prepared. That's dynamite."
Ickes turns to McCullough with a sneer on his face. "And we're supposed to slam the President because a hurricane changed course?"
McCullough sniffed. He hated when Ickes acted like this.
"Global warming,Harold," Terry said, drawing out his explanation that the attendees can admire its brilliance. "Global warming kept us from properly predicting the course of the hurricane. If the Bush administration had funded the Kyoto treaty as he should we'd have been able to predict exactly where this hurricane is going." Terry stopped to allow the attendees admire his brilliance.
"I don't think that's going to fly," Ickes said.
"Why not?" Carville boomed. "I bet we could find some meterologist wanting a few bucks, send him on 60 Minutes, have him throw out a whole bunch of mush about all the recent hurricane activity, the inability to predict them, all because of global warming. I say it's worth a try."
Ickes sniffed and McCullough smiled.
"What else?" Carville prompted.
"Well of course there's the problems with clean up," Harold offered. "We can find a couple of home owners that haven't gotten clean water and here's it's three days after the storm. Terry, you still have some of those idiot old folks down there from the last election? The ones that went on TV and testified that they'd mistakenly voted for Buchanan?"
Terry nodded. The Democrats had a sparkling and recently updated database of anti-Bush shills.
"Get them on the line. Tell them to look all disheveled and disoriented. Have one of the local stations go out and interview them, say day after tomorrow. Have them complain about lack of water and food. Tell them to complain about all their calls to FEMA were ignored. "
Terry took notes and nodded his head. He hated taking orders from Ickes but he knew this was a good idea and would make good copy. Terry also noted to call 60 Minutes and tell them about the local interview. Ickes always forgot little details like that."
"Harold," James said, pleased at the political hay being made during this session, "how about we get a Democrat shill, how about Susan Estrich? Get her on CNN complaining that the country needs money to take care of our own inner turmoil, not spending it on that mess in Iraq. Terry, I'm thinking, how about we float a notion that many of Florida's polling places were harmed, that flood waters might have hit the new voting machines? If we float the idea now we might be able to use it during a close election."
All attendees remained silent. Here was a Bush as Governor and one as President.
"We need to do some more thinking," Ickes said. "Let's meet back here at 9 pm tonight. Meanwhile, keep the thinking cap on. We need ammunition."
"That's it," Carville said, slapping his knees. "Meet back here at 9 pm and ask around, put on the thinking cap. We need to beat the hell out of this and we best get started right away."
Earlier, someone was blasting people from out of state for commenting about the storm on this thread. I thought it inappropraite.
I hope for the best in Florida.
I notice that people without transportation or with limited mobility could request help in evacuating, too.
http://www.mysanibel.com/
Latest info from Sanibel. Just watched a news conference from Sanibel, and asked that fools would quit launching boats to visit the island. Police should just presume that visitors on the island without POLICE uniforms are looters, and shoot on sight. A state of emergency has been declared.
I understand its Myrtle Beach, SC first....then outer banks of NC...fortunately for me I am in Mtns..
Wouldn't land be more expensive near the coastal areas and beaches than it would be further inland? I can see owing a mobile home near the beach but maybe as a second home or with some place to go when the storms come. In some areas of the country there aren't tornadoes or hurricanes and it's as safe living in a mobile home as anything else.
CNN was running a crawl - President Bush will visit Florida tomorrow.
I agree with you that it's inappropriate to criticize people for showing an interest in other areas. Most people have friends, relatives or at least acquiantances who have lived in Florida or visited at some time and would also be interested even if they are not living in the area. It is truly strange here when they close the theme parks (as they did yesterday) or waive the tolls on the Turnpike. It's spooky because it's so rare. If you ever visit here and see them doing either of those things, take it cereally (sp on purpose).
Poor people...
This Florida Freeper got very lucky in the last hours with the forecast prediction and actual path. Our local weatherman did a much better job than the weather channel in guiding us Floridians through the storm. My area was predicted to have sustained winds inland of 90 miles.hr and we actually ended us with very low winds. Not as much debris in the yard as after a summer severe afternoon thunderstorm. I'm in Yippee status but am concerned for the rest of the states citizens. Heads Up, storms are forming again in the waters. We ain't out of the woods yet this season.
Ping
I made this point yesterday on another thread, and I will make it again today. Hurricanes are UNPREDICTABLE...you can have access to all the meteorological experts and computer technology in the world, and a hurricane can STILL do the UNEXPECTED. The best advice? If you're in hurricane country, and there's one headed your way...leave, and get as far away as you can. Better to be a LIVE CHICKEN than a DEAD DUCK. Many took the advice of the media yesterday, played it a little too close to the vest, and paid with their lives.
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