Hurricane Charlie Cometh

[350HP930]

Well, depending on the carnage I may not be able to read or post on the BBS for a few days.

As long as the garage does not collapse on the 930 and the machine shop is not destroyed I will be a happy camper.

Wish me luck.

[VenezianBlau 87]

Good luck, sir!
Those gulf hurricanes are (especially) unpredictable.



Bob

[id10t]

Yup, supposed to hit up here in Gainesville/Alachua/Newberry this evening.

[}{arlequin]

My family who lives in Miami just bought a vacation/investmnt place near Key Largo.... timing is everything.

[smoak]

We live 1/4 mile from the Bay in Tampa and are riding this one out. The absence of power will suck but we are as ready as we can be. This is not going to be very fun!

[350HP930]

After predictions that the eye would hit tampa bay the hurricane is finally deviating east which will relieve us Tampa and St Pete folk of the worse of it. At one point they were predicting a 15' storm surge which would have submerged a lot of the area.

Unfortunately the area between Sarasota and Ft Myers is getting slammed and the hurricane is likely to cut a swath from that area through orlando towards the daytona/coco beach area.

I am getting ready to brace for the storm bands which are likely to give us 75+ mph winds, strong rain and possible tornados.

The hurricane will be closest to me between 7 and 8. If I am lucky and my electric stays up I may be able to stay on line through the worse of it.

It will beat going for days without electricity.

[350HP930]

For those who want a close up view of the action around here.

http://weathercenter.com/radar/doppler.htm

[singpilot]

I just saw that the storm suddenly turned right, came ashore at Sanibel, and was a Category 4 when it made landfall.

Neither of those things were expected.

[techweenie]

Wow. Good luck. Take care of yourself!

[motion]

Oh man... hope everything turns out alright.

[dd74]

Good luck, 350...

[johnco]

last hurricane here I used a power inverter plugged into my car, ran apower cord to fan and TV, and watched movies all day. just run the car for a while every 5 or 6 hours to recharge the battery and everything was okay. no reason to sweat in the dark until the power comes back on. 400 watt inverter was only $29.00. much cheaper than a generator. hope everything goes okay.

[350HP930]

The extra luck did me good, the tampa and st pete area was left unscathed. I don't even think we had more than 20 mph gusts.

It was quite anti-climactic. Things ended up becoming so boring I fell asleep around 6 PM and just woke up.

Some pics of the damage about 50 miles south of here can be found on the following yahoo slideshow.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?g=events/sc/080304tropicalweathe&tmpl=sl&e=1

[Keith Perry]

Hi. Gray dawn has arrived here at Coffin Point. The weather channel says Charley is 75 miles away and circulating at 85mph. Maybeso. What I know is the wind off the ocean is wet and steady at 40mph with occasional gusts a lot higher. The little grove of Marion Oaks on the right side of our yard is doing an intense jitterbug. They dance in the wind like no other tree I've ever seen. Whitecaps as far as I can see. The Porsche is under the house, a good 3 feet above sea level. I can tell the wind is shifting, so Charley is moving past us. Time for another mug of coffee and Spiced Morgan.

[350HP930]

It appears a lot of lives were lost though some of them were due to darwinism taking its toll.

We are very lucky this thing did not come up the bay. Though a lot of people were hurt thank god it hit at one of the lesser populated areas of the coast.



http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/hurricane_charley

PUNTA GORDA, Fla. - 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, but deputies said 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.

A slightly weaker Charley bore down on the South Carolina coast early Saturday, and the center was expected to approach the coast by morning.

In Florida, 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 (news - web sites) 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. Charlotte County officials were working to determine the number of fatalities early Saturday but no figures were immediately available from the emergency management office, the sheriff's department or the medical examiner's office.

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.

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.

[350HP930]

More pics of the carnage . .

http://www.weather.com/newscenter/topstories/charleyslideshow.html

[vash]

to all florida folks. i hope you are alright.

looks like orlando got the crap kicked out of it. just watched CNN. the airport was wasted.

cliff