Thousands Homeless as Florida Begins Storm Clean-Up

Sun Aug 15, 6:35 PM ET

By Michael Peltier

PUNTA GORDA, Fla. (Reuters) - The death toll from Hurricane Charley climbed to 16 on Sunday as thousands left homeless in southwest Florida sorted through wreckage and President Bush rushed in to view the devastation.

The fiercest hurricane to strike Florida in 12 years, Charley's 145 mph winds destroyed mobile homes, ripped roofs off houses and damaged tens of thousands of other buildings when it smashed ashore on Friday.

Florida emergency management officials said three more deaths had been confirmed, bringing the toll to 16.

At Punta Gorda, one of the Gulf Coast towns that bore the brunt of Charley's assault, local officials declined to say how many bodies were being stored in refrigerated trucks brought in as temporary morgues. But it was beginning to look like the fatalities would not be as high as originally feared.

"If the toll is what I believe I'm hearing, in a storm of the magnitude we went through, it's a miracle. I thought we would be looking at a significant loss of life. I was extremely concerned. I am feeling better," said Wayne Sallade, director of emergency management in Charlotte County.

Gov. Jeb Bush put preliminary damage estimates at $15 billion but cautioned that was likely to change, a spokesman for the Florida Division of Emergency Management said.

Some 3,900 people whose homes were demolished spent the night in shelters on Saturday, and thousands of others sought refuge with friends or relatives.

1.1 MILLION POWERLESS

By Sunday, 1.1 million people in the state were still without power, many of them in the area of Charley's initial tornado-like punch through a 10-mile wide swath. Several cities lacked running water.

Emergency workers opened care stations to dispense water, ice and food and give residents a chance to take showers, for many their first in three days. But the lack of phone service and power made it difficult to coordinate relief efforts.

"This is the largest American Red Cross response since Sept. 11," Red Cross worker J.B. Hunt said, adding that by Monday the agency would be able to serve 3,000 meals, three times a day, to those who needed them.

Inside a shelter at the L.A. Ainger Middle School in Punta Gorda, the newly homeless consoled each other. "We're all the same, we all have nothing," said Tina Rowe, who lost her own home and was comforting a sobbing elderly man.

Showing rapid support for people in the state where his brother Jeb is governor and which could be key to his reelection hopes in November, the president toured the worst-hit areas of Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte.

Rescuers were still searching for victims in the debris of mobile homes and splintered houses, picking through streets strewn with rubble and downed trees and going door to door to check on residents.

'CITY OF PILES'

The hurricane pulverized Punta Gorda, a city of 15,000. Residents dubbed it the "City of Piles" as they began sorting trash from treasure in the wreckage of their homes. Along the streets, heaps of insulation, aluminum siding, tree limbs and building materials rose from the ground.

"It was a nice place before this happened," said 13-year-old Patrick DeRoche as he surveyed the remains of his family's mobile home. "This was my room," he said, pointing to an open space where the roof and walls were torn away.

Anthony Jones, 42, and his son Toby, 16, spent Sunday picking through the rubble that used to be their mobile home.

"Sometimes you feel like maybe the lucky ones are the ones that died. 'Cause of what we've got to go through now," Jones said.

Some 4,000 National Guard troops ferried supplies, erected tents for temporary shelter and patrolled against looting.

As Charley pushed northeast through the state on Friday night, it stripped the orange groves in central Florida. It pummeled the Carolinas on Saturday, weakening to a tropical storm as it moved north.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency estimated 80 percent of the buildings in Charlotte County were damaged. Officials in neighboring Lee County said 250,000 buildings were damaged there. Florida sought emergency housing assistance for 10,000 families.

The president's visit came amid an intense election campaign in which Florida is a key swing state as he seeks to fight off Democratic challenger Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry in the November election.

Charley was the most devastating storm to hit Florida since Hurricane Andrew ripped up parts of Miami in 1992 and caused $25 billion in damage. Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, was president and faced criticism for reacting too slowly. (Additional reporting by Jim Loney in Punta Gorda and Jane Sutton in Miami) (Source: Reuters)