Hurricane!

Don’t be writing the season off just yet… just think back to 2004 when we were waiting for the “C” named storm to develop in early August. Shortly after the start of August Major Hurricane Charley made landfall in Punta Gorda, Florida as a category 4 hurricane. Look at what named storm were waiting on now? Chantal is the next in line to be named, and we might see her drifting around some where in the Atlantic basin very soon.

Weird weather here lately in general. I guess it's an El Nino year. I am not looking forward to hurricane season this year, although we were very lucky and stayed home during Hurricane Charley and the other 4 that passed through here (with the exception of Wilma). It is really a scary thing this weather pattern. If anyone still thinks there's no such thing as global warming, go out to the bookstore and buy Al Gore's book, An Inconvenient Truth and just look at the photos of places all over the globe comparing the coastlines and geographical areas from 20, 30 or 40 years ago and now. The difference is eye opening.

NBC ran a news telecast from the Gulf Coast last night and it appears that the region is still a long way from recovery as buildings and debris still remain strewn all about. Even Punta Gorda in Florida is still cleaning up damaged buildings from Hurricane Charley from two years ago. There appears to be no question that the current system is broken. The ability for society to recover from such a natural calamity is diminishing as resources are stretched to cover larger areas with each storm hit.

Looking back at the aftermath of Hurricane Charley in Florida offers a glimpse of what Katrina’s victims have in store. - PID

3 to 7 days. On your own. With NO assistance. This is the NORM! I live in Florida, I’ve dealt with hurricanes. During Hurricane Charley, we lost power for three days (at least!)…and we didn’t even have damage. What did we do? We SURVIVED. We used our gas grill…we had plenty of water stockpiled…we KNEW there was a storm coming. We prepared…and we didn’t expect someone to come save us…at least not immediately.

David M. Brown wrote a provocatively titled piece, “Price Gouging Saves Lives,” for Mises.org following Hurricane Charley in 2004. The thrust of the argument is essentially that to limit the prices vendors can charge is to reduce the incentive for vendors to go through the hardship and risk of transporting commodities to the afflicted areas.

I don’t usually do posts like this, but this time I just feel compelled. Please pray for all of those who are about to be affected by Hurricane Katrina. My very close friend Kathalise (aka Smoke) has family in Lousiana, which is where she grew up. My Cotillion sister Beth lives in the Mobile, Alabama, area, and is having to flee from this storm.

But back to this shockingly underpublished finding, and a few comments on Hurricaine Charley from our Democratic friends who have found it necessary to warn the rest of us idiots about what’s REALLY going on….

….Such as this witty poster who was able to make his own time machine to tell us how Bush is going to use this disaster to get votes!

I apparently work in a hurricane-resistant building. I discovered this today as a “supercell” thunderstorm was moving thru our area. Our manager on duty was standing in front of the door…I suggested that maybe he (we) should move. He informed me that we had hurricane glass windows….and a mega-reinforced roof.

So,…I began to work. This particular War Room was for Hurricane Charley. It was kinda neat, because I was at ground zero for Wal-Mart getting all of their stores up and running.

It was all in good fun, and they raised money to repair a Florida little league field destroyed by Hurricane Charley. If you missed this, catch the rerun it is interesting to fans of the Fab Five and fans of the Red Sox; if you are neither, I am sure you will enjoy watching the CSI Pungo reruns.

The Florida Bureau of Manufactured Home and RV Construction tested nearly 12,000 homes in 77 communities, in seven of the counties that stood in the path of Hurricane Charley. All the homes had been built and installed according to 1999 code. In the study, the Bureau failed to uncover a single case in which a manufactured home was moved on its foundation.

Biff had a birthday party to go to today. We dropped him off at the bowling alley, then dragged Cubby with us 40 miles to the east to the town of Arcadia, which is known for its antique shops. We found the main street lined with them on both sides. Arcadia suffered a lot from Hurricane Charley. Many houses have huge holes in the roofs, and small trailers parked in the front yards, where presumably the people live. Robby said it reminded her of West Virginia - never a good sign.

At first glance then terrorism may be seen as a very real, very significant problem. But by comparison in 2004 alone there were 16503 homicides in the US (and about 31000 gun-related deaths) and the four hurricanes which hit Florida last year caused tens of billions worth of damage - Hurricane Charley did $15 billion alone.

LOL...this, 9 months to the day that Hurricane Charley hit Pt Charlotte!

Hurricane Charley certainly wreaked havoc on Southwest Florida, however the early warnings, the incredible emergency team response, and the best neighbors in the United States have made it look like we just had a little thunderstorm. Residents were prepared.

To communicate I was sending text messages at first to family, then the phone lines went back up. I happened to have an ubiquitous AOL CD lying around waiting to get tossed in the trash until I realised it was my only option for getting online, if I used dial up and the free trial. Bingo. Within 5 minutes I was online via my laptop and a phone jack and emailing everyone back in the UK. More of a worry was the Dell laptop, the battery on which was straining after an hour which meant I had to take the car out and plug the laptop into the cigarette lighter to charge up. Take into account that there was a curfew at sunset and gas was getting as rare as rocking horse sh*t.

The damage is still very evident in particular 20 minutes up the road from us in Punta Gorda, where those US icons Macdonalds and Burger King remain shut down on highway 41 and some locals even showed off shotguns to deter looters.

But of course that's not what I want to write about. Anything but that. What started this was about Wednesday, when they came to take my citrus trees. I came home from work, and where my tangerine, grapefruit and orange trees used to be was just three sandy places in the yard. They even took the stumps. The grapefruit tree was in full bloom at the time, and there's only two or three better smelling flowers on the planet; two of those were open blossoms on the other two trees. When we were leaving to get Abby three years ago, those trees were in bloom. The smell of citrus blossoms and the anticipation of soon having my second child placed in my arms will be forever linked. It really must be experienced to be appreciated.

No crime, though. They took them with my consent, but they could have taken them without it. "They", of course, is the Florida State Department of Agriculture. Why they took them is just another one of those unfinished details from the hurricanes. See, some rocket scientist that lives down near Orange Avenue and 528 took a citrus tree of some sort from a quarantined area in Florida, and it had citrus canker. Hurricane Charley tore across that tree and spread canker for a couple of miles downwind. Any...

A week ahead of the storm's landfall, Linda M. Dillman, Wal-Mart's chief information officer, pressed her staff to come up with forecasts based on what had happened when Hurricane Charley struck several weeks earlier. Backed by the trillions of bytes' worth of shopper history that is stored in Wal-Mart's computer network, she felt that the company could "start predicting what's going to happen, instead of waiting for it to happen," as she put it.

Can Frances MOVE any slower now! Come on!! While it is good it is only a category 2 now we want this over with, the anticipation is killing me!! I’m at my house this time and I told hubby to stay in Jacksonville because there was no way he would make it back on Sunday... Luckily it won’t be as bad here, not nearly as bad as Hurricane Charley since it is on the East coast.

Cell phones are included in the phone part. It was the first time we lost our cell phone service though, because we didn't lose it in hurricane Charley which was nice. Except for the fact that alot of my friends have a different cell phone service than me and they lost theirs.

On August 13, Hurricane Charley devastated Southwest Florida and parts of central Florida. Charley was especially brutal to Special Training and Rehabilitation of Charlotte County (STAR).

Hurricane Charley continues to do damage in Southwest Florida.

From dealing with the reams of red tape the Federal Emergency Management Agency puts in the path of relief to just not getting answers, hurricane-related problems like these were among the issues brought Monday during a special town hall meeting at Port Charlotte High School.

Although intended to be solely about problems people are having with FEMA, many took advantage of the public forum to discuss the problems they are having with insurance, contractors and permitting.

Having a plan to prepare for the worst is great, but as two county officials said this week, no plan could prepare them for what Hurricane Charley brought.

For the second time, a local physician has been honored for his efforts in providing health care after Hurricane Charley struck the area.

Hurricane Charley was a killer looking for victims, Charlotte County Emergency Management Director Wayne Sallade told an attentive audience Wednesday at the 27th Annual National Hurricane Conference.

Gulf Coast residents were caught off guard on Aug. 13, when a Category 4 Hurricane Charley slammed into Punta Gorda. The black line drawn on maps by forecasters hours earlier showed a Category 2 storm hitting Tampa, about 100 miles to the north.

Hurricane specialist James Franklin said 24 hours before landfall, the probability of Charley's core hitting Tampa or Port Charlotte was the same: 30 percent.

"If people had been looking at this probability product rather than focusing on the line, nobody would have come to the conclusion they were safer in Port Charlotte than Tampa," Franklin said.

The hurricane center is considering getting rid of the skinny black line, or projected path, and replacing it with circles or dots to emphasize a much broader cone of uncertainty.

A jury on Tuesday found a Louisiana man guilty of unlicensed contracting during a state of emergency after Hurricane Charley struck the area.

Frank Andrew Russo, a former insurance claims agent who came to the area after Hurricane Charley hit, was sent to the Charlotte County Jail where he will wait for the results of a pre-sentence investigation. He faces a maximum of five years in prison.

Russo's case is the first to go to trial from more than 100 being handled by the 20th District State Attorney's Office. Russo, 38, is also the first in the county to face the charge as a third-degree felony. Gov. Jeb Bush changed the status of the crime from a misdemeanor to a felony after four hurricanes struck Florida in 2004.

The damage from Hurricane Charley was only the beginning of Beatrice Stanley's troubles.

Stanley said her family had to take the carpets out themselves because they couldn't stand to breathe inside the house.

Charley tore off shingles and siding, collapsed ceilings and flooded the inside of her Kissimmee home. However, when Stanley went to her insurance company of 15 years to get the damage fixed, she was told her policy had been canceled.

"That was worse than a nightmare. I didn't know where to turn," she said.

I had an interesting conversation with Bob (pictured) who works at the car rental return facility. Bob said that he endured the wrath of hurricane Charley in his home on the south side of Cape Coral. His wife had gone to an emergency shelter, but he did not. He thought that the hurricane would switch paths and that it would not be much of a threat in the end. He was wrong. He said the house cracked and popped during the highest winds. There was also a loud roar. Amazingly, the house suffered very little damage. Other homes in that same area suffered major damage. Bob said that he will never again ignore warnings and will go to a shelter or evacuate elsewhere. He never wants to go through something like that again.

For some time after Charley hit I would break out in tears. I went thru feelings of guilt that our home survived major damage. I knew people who lost everything in the hurricanes this summer. I knew a woman with children who were living in a tent next to where their apartment used to stand until FEMA brought in some trailers. I kept asking, "why them"? and "Why was our home spared and theirs was not"? It took me some time to understand that it is just the luck of the draw when it comes to mother nature.

Mark Jaquith blogs about the approach of Hurricane Charlie last year and has a page of hurricane-related blogs.

Just thought I’d throw out a few links to the other Florida bloggers covering the hurricane.

WeatherBug
HatcherShack
Sticks of Fire
Nick’s Big Adventure
Bark Bark Woof Woof
Interstate4Jamming
Side Salad
The Unstoppable Girlie
Crazy Island
My Single Mom Life
DeCloah Blog

And Glenn Reynolds isn’t in Florida, but he’s been linking to a few Florida bloggers, so watch there for more links.

Did I miss anyone? Leave a comment if you know of any other Florida bloggers covering the storm.

Here's another example of blog reporting on hurricanes, this time for Hurricane Charlie.

Looks like hurricane Charlie is tearing things up pretty badly down in Florida. President Bush has already declared several counties as disaster areas and the storm is just now hitting the Carolina coasts. I’ve got friends and family in the path and I hope they’re all safe and sound and make it through this OK. I’ll have to see if I can check in with my cousins and Aunt and Uncle in Daytona Beach, but I’ve already heard from my friend Michael Brady via instant messenger in Wilmington, NC where the storm was just hitting about a half-hour ago. It was discomforting to have him suddenly sign off in the middle of the conversation and I can only assume he must have lost power at that point. Hopefully he and his fellow voice actors will make it through safely. I don’t recall where exactly my other relatives reside in that State, but hopefully they’ll be OK as well.