Crews Rush to Hurricane-Ravaged Florida
PUNTA GORDA, Fla. – Urban rescue teams, insurance adjusters and National Guard troops scattered across Florida Monday to help residents rally from the brunt of Hurricane Charley, the worst storm to hit the state in a dozen years.
At least 16 people were killed in Florida and officials estimate the storm caused as much as $11 billion in damage to insured homes alone. Earlier, Charley killed four people in Cuba and one in Jamaica.
Officials gave no count of how many people remained unaccounted for after the weekend, but said the search for missing people was slow in some areas because downed power lines and debris were making the search dangerous.
Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown said it could take several weeks to find all the victims.
“We literally have thousands of people without homes who have spread out all over Florida and probably neighboring states,” he told NBC’s “Today” show Monday.
In North Port, Darren Perreault sipped a cup of coffee outside the San Pedro Catholic Church activities center, thankful he and his 14-year-old son, Daniel, had a place to spend the night.
“This is like heaven,” Perreault said. “Drive through Punta Gorda, you’ll see hell firsthand.”
Restoring power to the nearly 1 million people without it could take weeks. Some 2,300 people were in emergency shelters, and Brown said 11,000 have already applied for disaster aid.
The hardest-hit areas appeared to be the retirement community of Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte in Charlotte County, though federal officials expanded the disaster aid zone to 25 counties on Sunday.
“It’s starting to sink in,” Jo Trail said Monday at a Red Cross shelter in Englewood, where she was staying with her husband and 10-year-old grandson.
Her mobile home in Arcadia was completely destroyed, along with most of her possessions. The family rode out the storm lying underneath a mattress.
“It took the false teeth right out of my mouth,” Trail said, showing the absence of any front teeth. “It took the glasses right off of my face.”
Amid the tragedies and frustration, a grim humor emerged: garishly colored T-shirts proclaiming “I survived Hurricane Charley” popped up for sale.
After slamming into Florida with winds reaching 145 mph and a surge of sea water of 13 feet to 15 feet, Charley hit open ocean and made landfall again in South Carolina. It moved into North Carolina and up the eastern seaboard as a tropical storm before being downgraded to a depression Sunday.
In and around Punta Gorda, trailer home after trailer home lay toppled. Others were blown apart entirely, exposing interior walls that had been pushed down flat. Splintered wood and shattered glass were scattered about.
As the storm weakened off the coast of New England, President Bush surveyed the devastation from helicopter. He consoled storm victims in Punta Gorda, saying “A lot of people’s lives are turned upside down.”
The Federal Emergency Management Agency was sending teams of medical, urban rescue and communication workers; at least 60 semitrailers containing cots, blankets, meals, portable toilets, wash kits and other necessities; and truckloads of water and ice.
Power generators, cots, blankets, hammers, nails and portable toilets were unloaded from planes and trucks by members of Florida’s National Guard at Lakeland Linder Regional Airport on Sunday, then reloaded for delivery to devastated areas.
J.B. Hunt, a spokeswoman for the American Red Cross, said the agency has eight mobile kitchens and five feeding centers that will be capable of serving 9,000 meals a day by Monday.
“This is the largest Red Cross response since Sept. 11,” she said.
At a Port Charlotte shopping center Sunday, some hurricane victims waited as long as two hours in 90-plus degree weather for bags of ice being distributed by armed National Guard soldiers and food from charity organizations.
State officials warned of price gouging, and promised to arrest offenders. The state had received about 400 complaints of price-gouging as of Sunday, and officials warned people not to pay cash for repairs.
FEMA said the state has requested catastrophic housing for 10,000 people, and more than 4,000 National Guard troops have been activated. Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings said 2,000 insurance adjusters were already on the ground and 2,000 more were on their way.
Help came from other states, too.
Carolyn Norton and husband, Dennis, brought their two children from Atlanta as they delivered a flatbed truck full of generators. The couple works for New Image Towing and Recovery in Marietta, Ga., and said they felt a need to help Charley’s victims.
“It’s terrible. I’m much in prayer for all of them,” Carolyn Norton said. “I feel so bad for everybody and I’m glad we could be a part of helping. As little as it sounds, bringing those things down here, I guess it’s a whole lot,” she said.
In Fort Myers, just across from the barrier island of Sanibel, pick-up trucks were carting away palm fronds and the twisted remnants of metal gutters on Monday. Power was restored.
Sharon Bauman was taking her dog out for a walk down here newly cleaned street. “The ground was just covered. It was just like fall leaves. So they really worked hard.”
More poor weather may be on the horizon: Hurricane Danielle strengthened into a Category 2 storm some 700 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands, while Tropical Storm Earl, which had sustained winds near 45 mph, was centered about 500 miles southeast of the Dominican Republic and moving west at 22 mph.
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On the Net:
National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov