who else is in the way of hurricane Charley?--now with maps!

[Mill]

Actaeon -- I hope everything is ok with you. I just talked to my brother and they are located on 192 right near the Walmart and Four Winds Blvd in Kissimmee. If that isn't accurate enough then they are about 3 miles away from Celebration and Poinciana Blvd. I'm glad I got out of there last night! He said they had extremely high winds and heavy rains, but couldn't go look for any damage because it was too bad. I hope you are doing ok. FWIW, I mapped their address and got the exact long/lat using geocode. The eyewall hit them directly and they should be in the actual eye about right now. Their internet and power was down, but his cell was working slightly(very hard to hear and cut in and out).

 

[dud]

Last report before the "eye" hits: Orlando, the eye is supposed to pass within 10 miles of the house at 9:35 PM EST. The winds are REALLY strong and at least 20 feet of the neighbors fence just blew down. The wind and rain are also blowing in around the front door. Power is dipping every few seconds but the UPS keeps me on-line. Most of the metro Orlando are should be relatively safe by 11 PM tonight. Pray for us ...

 

[Mill]

Eyewall hitting Orlando now. My brother has some damage but unsure how much. Gust of 105mph reported at Orlando Airport.

 

[conjur]

It's tracking right alongside I-4 toward Daytona

Lots of rainfall...look at the scale
(around here, yellow means about 1-2"...for Charley it's 5-6")

 

[steph30]

Dud-you and your family are definately in our prayers. As well as everyone else in the area. Thanks so much for your effort to keep everyone informed of what's going on where you are.

steph30

 

[conjur]

Rainfall about 2-2.5" per hour but it appears to be weakening some now.

 

[Gamingphreek]

All those yet to be in the hurricanes path, will be or are in the path are in my prayers. I know as does everyone else here that we will here from all of you tomorrow, and youll all be safe and sound. Good luck.

-Kevin

 

[kermalou]

seriously good luck guys, you will need it all.

 

[SunnyD]

My 1st hurricaine ever... and we were pretty much unaffected. Now to continue job hunting.

 

[Shawn]

Power has been out here in Naples since 2pm. We drove around and there were lots of trees down all over the place. A lot of the traffic lights were out and there were police officers directing traffic. It's insanely hot around here without AC. I heard on the radio power could be out for up to a week!!! :Q I hope it's not that bad. All of our food will be spoiled by tomorrow. Well I gotta save the laptop battery incase it really does take that long for power to come back on. Thank god we only got the tail end. North of here tons of houses were distroyed.

 

[conjur]

Charley Causes 'Significant Loss of Life'
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040814/D84EUTV80.html

PUNTA GORDA, Fla. (AP) - 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 and deputies were standing guard over stacks of bodies because 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.

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 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.

Extensive damage was also reported on exclusive Captiva Island, a narrow strip of sand west of Fort Myers.

President Bush 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.

NBC News now reporting 60 body bags and two refrigeration trucks (presumably to be used as makeshift morgues) have been ordered for the Punta Gorda area.


And,

Hurricane Charley Devastates Western Florida
http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/420923|top|08-14-2004::06:29|reuters.html

 

[DAPUNISHER]

A lot of people got hammered last night but our area was spared the hard stuff. Just minor damage locally, some downed trees, the usual. My heart goes out to the people down south though. Here's our local papers' coverage link

 

[aircooled]

Looks like we'll be seeing it in the Raleigh NC area this afternoon. Hopefully it will have lost alot of steam by then...

 

[Megatomic]

Glad to see you were spared dude. I was thinking about all the FL ATers last night, I'm glad you are all safe. :beer:

 

[OCNewbie]

Well it's 9:50AM. I live about 10-15 miles North of downtown Orlando. Was pretty loud last night. Lost power for about 12-13 hours, just got it back about 30 mins ago. Lots and lots of downed trees in my neighborhood. Went for a little drive a little earlier and saw power crews everywhere repairing fallen lines. Specially on one stretch of road there were like 4 or 5 different sections where trees had fallen on power lines. Could have been a lot worse where I live, so thankful no real damage to my house, just a lot of limbs and pine needles, etc., in the yard. Hope everyone else faired ok.

 

[aphex]

Just checking in to let everyone know i made it through alright.....

We wont be heading back till later today or tomm, but hopefully everything is ok. The eye apparently passed less than 15 miles south of my apartment complex in southern sarasota. Exit 183 (2 exists or so south of me on the highway) was decimated.

I'll have some pics of the damage up tomm if i have power.

 

[pitupepito2000]

I'm glad it's not me

 

[Led Zeppelin]

As beautiful as Florida is, and as much as I bitch and moan about the cold weather and snow that Connecticut gets, I'm sure glad we don't have to deal with what you people went through yesterday. I guess CT isn't so bad after all.

 

[amcdonald]

Well it barely affected jacksonville beach... at one point there were 60-70mph winds for like 30 minutes, and some stuff got turned into debris on the roads, but nothing major happened. I feel sorry for anyone who lost property/family.

 

[homestarmy]

Hey guys, I'm in Deltona FL and I pretty much got the brunt of it here. I'm not sure exactly whether we got the eye or what, as I lost power and they weren't too descriptive on the radio.

After most of it was over, me and a bunch of my neighbors went around the street looking at the damage. There were A LOT of trees down luckily on my street not many on houses. One tree on a recently cleared lot that was spared fell on a truck and a mercedes. I went in my backyard to find that my one tree was snapped in half like a toothpick.

This morning around 9am I walked around the neighborhood and there was only standing water in one spot that floods regularly (just a small intersection). There were still many trees down, but some type of task force must have went around with chainsaws cutting off any ends that extended into the street. I was able to snap off a bunch of pictures of all kinds of damage, but I am unable to upload because I still do not have power in my area (at least as of 10AM, I am at work now). I hear we may possibly not even have power for up to 5 days (better not be true). I also found that my neighbor's skylight was ripped off, letting water get right into his living room.

My work in Lake Mary a little south has power, but they may be on a generator (I know they have one). On the way plenty of trees and some bilboards were even broken. The sky is still dark and we were getting heavy rain not long ago.

I'll get my pictures online and link them in this thread or maybe start a new one once I get the opportunity. I might just use battery backup time to get me online for a few minutes to do so.

Luckily no damage to my new house at all. Now I need to find a chainsaw to take care of this tree in my backyard... is there any other way to get it taken care of for free?

 

[eklass]

heh... orlando here. no power, no gas. damn hell. i escaped to gainesville to ride out the power outage. hopefully they'll have things up and running soon