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The Mad Monk
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of Ice Cream
Mar 2000
time: 23:34
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quote:
Hurricane Charley Whips Fla.; Three Dead
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Aug 14, 12:58 AM (ET)
By JILL BARTON and ALLEN G. BREED
The roof of a garage is blown off onto Charlotte County Sheriff's cruisers from winds of Hurricane Charley in the parking lot of the Charlotte County Airport, Friday, Aug. 13, 2004, in Punta Gorda,Fla. (AP Photo/Scott Martin)
PUNTA GORDA, Fla. (AP) - Hurricane Charley struck west-central Florida with a wicked mix of wind and water Friday, ravaging oceanfront homes and trailer parks, tearing apart small planes and inundating the coast before moving inland to assault Orlando and Daytona Beach. Three people died during the storm and dozens were injured.
The Category 4 storm was stronger than expected when the eye reached the mainland Friday afternoon at Charlotte Harbor, pummeling the coast with winds reaching 145 mph and a surge of sea water of 13 to 15 feet. More than a million customers were without power statewide.
President Bush declared a major disaster area in Florida. His brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, projected damage from Charley could exceed $15 billion, but that estimate was preliminary.
Damage was especially heavy in downtown Punta Gorda on Charlotte Harbor.
"It looks like a war zone - power lines down everywhere, street signs, pieces of roofs blown off, huge trees uprooted," said Buddy Martin, managing editor of the Charlotte Sun.
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.
Extensive damage was also reported on exclusive Captiva Island, a narrow strip of sand west of Fort Myers.
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.
By midnight, the center of the storm had moved offshore into the Atlantic Ocean northeast of Daytona Beach.
This is an image of Hurricane Charley taken by NASA's Terra satellite at 12:35 pm EDT, Friday, Aug. 13, 2004. A stronger-than-expected Hurricane Charley roared ashore Friday as a dangerous Category 4 storm, slamming the heavily populated Gulf Coast with devastating storm surges and 145 mph winds. (AP Photo/NASA/ Space Science And Engineering Center, University of Wisconsin)
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.
Wayne Sallade, director of emergency management in Charlotte County, was angry that forecasters underestimated the intensity of the storm until shortly before landfall.
"They told us for years they don't forecast hurricane intensity well, and unfortunately we know that now," he said. "This magnitude storm was never predicted."
Florida Emergency Management Director Craig Fugate was adamant that local officials should have been prepared but acknowledged: "Hurricane forecasting is not a perfect science."
The president's declaration made federal money available to Charlotte, Lee, Manatee and Sarasota counties. "Our prayers are with you and your families tonight," Bush said from Seattle.
Small aircraft damaged by winds from Hurricane Charley sit on the tarmac at the Charlotte County Airport Friday, Aug. 13, 2004 in Punta Gorda, Fla. (AP Photo/Scott Martin)
About 138,000 customers lost electricity in Lee County - including the emergency management center.
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.
Anne Correia spent a harrowing two hours alone in a closet in her Punta Gorda apartment.
"I could hear the nails coming out of the roof," she said. "The walls were shaking violently, back and forth, back and forth. It was just the most amazing and terrifying thing. I just kept praying to God. I prayed with my whole heart."
Don Paterson of Punta Gorda rode out the hurricane in his trailer. It began to rock, a flying microwave oven hit him in the head, and then the refrigerator fell on him. He spent the rest of the storm hiding behind a lawnmower, as his home was demolished.
This National Hurricane Center satellite image shows Hurricane Charley south of Orlando, Fla., moving north-northeast, in an image time-stamped at 7:32 p.m. EDT, Friday, Aug. 13, 2004. (AP Photo/National Hurricane Center)
"Happy Friday the 13th," he said.
As an airplane hangar at the Charlotte County airport flew apart around him and his wife, "It sounded like a calypso band gone crazy," said Jim Morgan.
The eye of the hurricane passed directly over Punta Gorda, a city of 15,000. At the 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- by 100-foot building.
At Charlotte Regional Medical Center in Punta Gorda, up to 50 people came in with storm injuries. The hospital was so badly damaged that patients were being transferred to other hospitals on Coast Guard helicopters.
"There's a lot of crush injuries," hospital CEO Josh Putter said. "Things have fallen on people, crushed their legs, crushed their pelvis - a lot of bleeding."
In Arcadia, 20 miles inland, one wall collapsed at a civic center serving as a shelter for 1,200 people. Only one person was hurt, and her injuries were minor.
The wall "started peeling back," said one evacuee, Alida Dejongh. "It lifted, and you could just see more and more light. You could hear this popping and zipping noise like a giant Ziploc bag."
On Sanibel Island and in Cape Coral, streets were flooded, trees uprooted and power lines down, but there were no reports of major damage. In Desoto County outside Arcadia, several dead cows, wrapped in barbed wire, littered the roadside.
On Fort Myers Beach, sea water swamped the barrier island. At least 20 people sought treatment at a hospital in Fort Myers.
"We're going under," said Lucy Hunter, a hotel operator. "When the ocean decides to meet my bay, that's a lot of water. It's already in my pool."
At 11 p.m. EDT, the center of the storm was about 10 miles southwest of Daytona Beach and moving north-northeast near 25 mph, with an increase expected. Maximum sustained winds were near 85 mph with higher gusts.
The center was expected to move into the Atlantic Ocean near Daytona Beach, then approach the South Carolina coast Saturday morning. A hurricane warning was in effect from Cocoa Beach to North Carolina.
About a million people in the Tampa Bay area had been told to leave their homes. Some drove east, only to find themselves in the path of the storm as it moved north.
"I feel like the biggest fool," said Robert Angel of Tarpon Springs, who sought safety in a Lakeland 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 storm forced the closing of Orlando theme parks Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando, SeaWorld and Animal Kingdom. The only previous time the parks closed for a hurricane was in 1999 for Floyd.
Charley was the strongest hurricane to hit Florida since the Category 5 Andrew hit south of Miami in 1992. Hurricane Mitch, which stalled over Honduras in 1998, also was Category 5 with sustained wind over 155 mph. Mitch killed some 10,000 people in Central America.
Charley was expected to slide along Georgia's coast on Saturday. Farther north, hurricane warnings and watches were raised along the South Carolina coast.
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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, and Mike Branom and Mike Schneider in Orlando contributed to this report.
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On the Net:
National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov
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http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040814/D84EPNS80.html
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The Mad Monk
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of Ice Cream
Mar 2000
time: 23:34
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They're talking about stacks of bodies, now.
Holy ****.
quote:
Charley Causes 'Significant Loss of Life'
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Aug 14, 6:52 AM (ET)
By MARK LONG
PUNTA GORDA, Fla. (AP) - The death toll from Hurricane Charley rose early Saturday, when a county official said there had a been "significant loss of life" 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 in Charlotte and thousands were left homeless, Sallade said. He compared the devastation with 1992's Hurricane Andrew, which the National Hurricane Center directly blamed for the deaths of 26 people, 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 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.
Three hospitals in Charlotte County sustained significant damage, Sallade said, and officials at Charlotte Regional Medical Center in Punta Gorda said they were evacuating all patients Saturday.
More than 200 ambulances - many from southeast Florida - were organized to transfer patients to other hospitals in Orlando, Sarasota, Tampa and Lee County.
"We really have to get the patients out of here. This place just isn't safe," said Peggy Greene, chief nursing officer. She said windows were blown out, part of the roof was blown off, and there was no power or phone service.
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 5 a.m. EDT, the center of the storm was in the Atlantic Ocean, about 115 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 later Saturday. A hurricane warning was issued from Altamaha Sound, Ga., north to the North Carolina-Virginia state line. From there, a tropical storm watch extended north to Sandy Hook, including the Chesapeake and Delaware bays. A tropical storm warning was issued from Sandy Hook north to Merrimack River, including the New York Harbor and Long Island Sound.
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.
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http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040814/D84EUTV80.html
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chegitz guevara
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Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:34
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Unfortunately, the hurricane hit an area that was not a mandatory evacuation zone, from what I can tell. The state only ordered evacuations in the Tampa/St. Pete areas, about a 100 miles to the north of where Charley made landfall.
I'm not gonna fault Bush for thinking the storm was gonna hit north. Even when it became obvious yesterday that the storm had changed tracks, offical sources still had it on its originally projected path. By that time, however, it was too late to evacuate. As the Gov. said, at a certain point, it's not where you're from that matters, it's where you are," i.e., at a certain point, you need to stay put.
I will, hopwever, blame him for not evacuating the whole of the West Coast of Florida. Everyone knows these things can shift at the last minute, and no one should have been in the path of the storm until it came inland.
I fear there are going to be more dead than with Andrew. There were 100 people on Sanibel Island, people who thought the storm would pass them by, when they took a direct hit. Punta Gorda wasn't supposed to be hit, and it was ground zero. Hundreds are missing in Charlette County.  This has the potential to be bad.
It's a beautiful morning her in Jacksonville though. Not even a branch out of place outside my apartment.
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14-08-2004 07:21
Attachment: 
. Such ignorance. This is another reason I tend to be apathetic. These ****ing people know they should leave, yet they stay. 
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