One year later

Today is the one year anniversary of Hurricane Charley hitting the Central Florida area. I thought I'd share my post from my old blog.

Saturday, August 14, 2004
Hurricane Charley

Well, Charley has come and gone. No big deal for us personally.

Part of the fiberglass roof over our side porch is missing. A piece of lattuce came down. One of the sun shades was destroyed. A part of our fence came off. All VERY minor stuff. Two of our neighbors had trees ripped out of the ground, in both cases the tree fell away from the houses.

The eye of the hurricane went directly over the airport, about 20 miles away or so. There were max sustained winds of 85, with gusts at 105, a new record for OIA.

We lost cable about... 9:00, and electricity shortly after that. I lit some candles for TheHusbnad and went to bed. He stayed up until after 1:00 a.m., he went for a drive and looked at the neighborhood... for what reason I don't know. There was no power so I don't think he could see anything. For some reason, he took my car (oi vey) instead of his truck. Sometimes I just don't understand him...

The power came back on this morning, just before 8:00 a.m. So, two hours without coffee wasn't too bad. I made some with the press-pot and cold water, that just didn't cut it. People are out cutting up the trees in their yards now.

There were two deaths attributed to Charley from the Central Florida area. One was from an 18 wheeler being tossed on to a car while driving on the Bee Line. This was before Charley actually showed up... was really from a feeder band earlier in the evening. On the local news they are talking about Charlotte county where -- it is described -- deputies are standing guard over "stacks of bodies" yet to be identified. They are saying that more than 100 people are reported missing.

It begs the question. If Central Florida started worrying about this storm on Wednesday, when Charley was still south of Cuba, why wasn't Punta Gorda? Just because the NWS said it was coming to Tampa? One of the models said it would come in near there-- and then head towards Orlando... exactly what happened. Our local TV stations were telling us about this... where were the local stations down there?