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.
We also know that storms can cause significant damage in areas they aren't "supposed" to hit.
Since you're in Colorado, you may not know these things. I wouldn't know a whole lot about living through blizzards and whatever other weather hazards you have.
However, having lived nearly 50 years within 40 miles of the ocean, I know that blaming the weather forecasters and emergency officials for this is just plain ignorant.
Then why don't you, the next time you see this happen, go down and insist those people evacuate. Go door to door.
See post 48.
have you heard any reports this morning from the east Coast of Florida?
They expected Charlie (just like a man - gives you a line and then does something else - fickle!) to go in at Tampa Clearwater and it made a sudden turn on them.
The people should have been prepared for this eventuality but we have gotten so use to believing the weather man and his predicted paths, that we forget nature does it's own thing and we can't control it.
That isn't my point. My point is not to sit here and start being a 20/20 perfect in hindsight poster. That is infuriating. "I would have known better, I would have done better, how come those families didn't move their elderly loved ones out."
It is not the time or place.
dixie, I specifically heard Greg Kelly on Fox News confirm that officials in Punta Gorda were using the phrase "stacks of bodies". Prayers for your son, brother, uncles and their families. I'm sure that the area is experiencing severe communication problems and hope you hear from them soon.
If I lived in a trailer park on the FL coast, and had a hurricane warning for twenty-four hours, I would be long gone.
It has nothing to do with the "media", and it's nobody's fault except those who chose to stay behind.
This storm was predicted to come ashore as a cat 2 at the most. No one forsaw the storm making the turn nor the fact that it would increase in strength.
It's obvious you need someone to blame, but it's nobody's fault. Predicting the weather is not an exact science. Hurricane warnings were up, but landfall was supposed to be further north, in the Tampa/Clearwater area, based on historical models. Unless a person is clairvoyant, that person cannot predict what a hurricane will do minute to minute with the absolute precision you demand.
I am not blaming anyone. Go back and read what I wrote. I am saying this is tragic and asking others to stop blaming and being harsh in this time.
"The people should have been prepared for this eventuality but we have gotten so use to believing the weather man and his predicted paths, that we forget nature does it's own thing and we can't control it."
You are so right, and when it's over the people either complain that they weren't warned strongly enough or if they are lucky and it's not bad, they complain that the news people made too big a deal of it. I'm sure it's very hard to get it exactly right, that's what makes "prediction" so difficult.
That's nothing to what Hugo did. Hugo cut a swath thru 13 counties and I've forgotten how many states and went on into Canada strew death and destruction everywhere both during and after.
By the way most deaths are after the storm during clean up because people don't use common sense safety measures.
Hey RightWinger - We learned hard lessons from Hugo, didn't we?
I just hope to heck people in the path of this monster--even though it's weakened--get out of its way.
Punta Gorda is to the south of where the storm was supposed to hit. They had no idea that it was coming in there.
Keep remarks like that off this thread or your stay here will be short. Thanks.
hmmmm . . . . Who might we have in mind?
And my point is that trying to cast blame on anyone besides the people who didn't listen to the evacuation orders, as you have been doing, is ignorant.
It seems the forecasters had projected a different course---more northerly toward Tampa. Instead, the hurricane changed course eastward and hit an area that initially thought they would escape it.
FoxNews said there are at least 2 mobile home parks in the Punta Gorda area that were destroyed.
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