President Bush declared a major disaster area in Florida on Friday, while his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, projected damage from Hurricane Charley could exceed $15 billion. However, that estimate was preliminary.
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 told Florida residents from Seattle.
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 lawn mower as his home was demolished.
“Happy Friday the 13th,” he said.
At Charlotte Regional Medical Center in Punta Gorda, up to 50 people arrived 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.”
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.
Extensive damage was reported on exclusive Captiva Island, a narrow strip of sand west of Fort Myers.
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.”
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.”
As an airplane hangar at the Charlotte County airport flew apart around him and his wife, “It sounded like a calypso band gone crazy,” Jim Morgan said.
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 deputy’s car and ripped the roof off an 80- by 100-foot building.
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.
On Fort Myers Beach, sea water swamped the barrier island.
“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 this 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.
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