PUNTA GORDA, Fla. - 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.
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.
Three people died during the storm and dozens were injured. More than 500,000 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.
Charley reached landfall at 12:45 p.m. PDT, 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.
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.
"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.
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 9 p.m., the center of the hurricane was 15 miles south-southwest of Orlando, moving north-northeast near 25 mph and gaining speed. Maximum sustained winds had decreased to near 115 mph with higher gusts, with further weakening expected.
Charley was forecast to strike the Daytona Beach area before reaching the Atlantic Ocean, where it could regain strength. Rain totaling four to eight inches was expected along Charley's path, creating the risk of flash flooding.
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.
---
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.
---
On the Net:
National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov
