Hurricane Charley bullied its way up Florida’s midsection Friday, flipping small airplanes, tearing off roofs, knocking down trees and flooding roads as it headed from the state’s Gulf Coast through Orlando and Daytona Beach.
Three deaths were reported across the state and up to 50 people were injured in Punta Gorda alone. More than 1 million people were without power.
One of the strongest hurricanes ever to hit the Sunshine State, Charley slammed into Florida near Charlotte Harbor carrying winds of 145 m.p.h. and a wall of water 13 to 15 feet high, state meteorologist Ben Nelson said.
Gov. Jeb Bush predicted damage would be in the billions of dollars. His brother, President Bush, declared the regions in Florida affected by Charley and Tropical Storm Bonnie a federal disaster area.
The storm was stronger than expected when its eye passed over Punta Gorda, a city of 15,000 on Charlotte Harbor, about halfway between Ft. Myers and Sarasota. At Charlotte Country Airport, wind tore apart small planes, and one flew down the runway as if it were taking off.
At Charlotte Regional Medical Center in Punta Gorda, up to 50 people came in with storm injuries. The hospital was so badly damaged that injured people and existing patients were being transferred by Coast Guard helicopters to other hospitals.
“We can’t keep patients here,” hospital CEO Josh Putter said. “Every roof is damaged, lots of water damage, half our windows are blown out. …
“There are a lot of crush injuries. Things have fallen on people, crushed their legs, crushed their pelvis–a lot of bleeding, a lot of major and minor lacerations.”
Winds blew off the roof of a hurricane shelter where 1,200 people had gathered.
Damage was also reported at a state veterans nursing home; four fire stations were lost and three hospitals were out of service, according to state reports.
Rescue crews in Port Charlotte were going neighborhood to neighborhood, checking to see if people were buried under the rubble.
On U.S. Highway 41 just outside Port Charlotte, a town near Punta Gorda, an Ace Hardware store was flattened.
Tom Brown, 40, manager of the store for the past 20 years, was weeping amid the ruins of tools and other hardware as he stood on top of the rubble trying to contact the store’s owners on his cell phone.
His wife, Barbara, said the couple, who live nearby, almost decided to ride out the storm at the store because it was a sturdy building made of cinderblock.
“This is his life, it’s our life,” she said. “And now it’s just gone.”
Refugees see roof go
At Port Charlotte Middle School, more than 600 people took refuge in many wings of the building. The gymnasium held about 200 people until the roof started leaking and portions of it collapsed. No one was seriously injured, and everyone was evacuated to other parts of the school.
The Town Center Car Wash near Port Charlotte was in tatters.
“It looks like the roof is all gone,” said Dolly Williams, 68, of nearby Cleveland, who checked on the business for friends who owned it. “And I don’t have a clue what my house looks like.”
The state put 5,000 National Guard personnel on alert to help deal with the storm. About 1,300 had been deployed by Friday night, a state emergency management spokeswoman said.
South of Port Charlotte, in Lee County, damage was reported at a Cape Coral hospital, courthouse and to City Hall.
Before storming ashore Friday afternoon, the Category 4 hurricane taunted and terrorized half the state.
Within a span of 30 minutes, Charley’s anticipated target shifted down the coastline from Pinellas to Manatee to Sarasota to Sanibel Island. The storm earlier had been a more moderate Category 2 on a scale of 5..
“Until this thing no longer has a name, it’s like sleeping with rattlesnakes,” said Gregg Feagans, chief of emergency management in Sarasota County.
Wayne Sallade, director of emergency management in Charlotte County, said he 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.”
Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center near Miami, agreed.
“He’s absolutely right. We can’t predict rapid intensification with any accuracy, and I think we have been pretty honest about that,” he said. “But we have been talking about the possibility of a major hurricane since at least 5 a.m. Thursday.”
Jeb Bush said he spoke to his brother before the storm came ashore in Charlotte County and the president “pledged to provide whatever support is necessary.”
Emergency officials had earlier urged more than 2 million people to evacuate from Key West, the southernmost tip of the United States, to Daytona Beach on the Atlantic shore. The Kennedy Space Center and the nearby Orlando theme parks closed early. Navy ships in Jacksonville were sent out to sea to avoid the storm.
The storm passed over Key West without causing much damage after sweeping over Cuba. Three deaths in Cuba and one in Jamaica were attributed to the hurricane.
Andrew an angry predecessor
The last storm as strong as Charley to hit Florida was Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which devastated parts of South Florida with 165 m.p.h. winds. That storm, the third-strongest on record to hit the U.S. mainland, killed two dozen people in South Florida and Louisiana. Andrew also caused more than $26 billion in damage, the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history.
Along U.S. Highway 411 between Northport and Port Charlotte, a five-story SunTrust office building was surrounded by downed trees, many of them ripped from the ground with patches of sod still attached to the roots.
Maria Marvan, 52, and Margie Alix, 56, surveyed the damage Friday night in their modest neighborhood of stucco homes in north Port Charlotte.
“This is unbelievable,” Marvan said. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Neither had been through a hurricane before.
“I wouldn’t want to go through this again,” Alix said.
At least 100 people refused to leave Sanibel Island, choosing to remain on the island until the only bridge is reopened.
“It looks as if they’re going to have to ride out the storm,” said Gordon DeMarchi, public information specialist for Lee County.
On Ft. Myers Beach, sea water swamped the barrier island.
“We’re going under,” said Lucy Hunter, the hotel operator at the Pink Shell Beach Resort and Spa. “When the ocean decides to meet my bay, that’s a lot of water.”
In Punta Gorda south of Sarasota, Don Paterson 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, and his home was demolished.
“Happy Friday the 13th,” he said.
Sources: National Hurricane Center, ESRI, GDT
Chicago Tribune
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