August 13, 2004
By JILL BARTON and ALLEN G. BREED

Photo: The roof of a garage is blown off onto Charlotte County Sheriff's cruisers from winds of Hurricane Charley in the parking lot of the Charlotte County Airport, Friday, Aug. 13, 2004, in Punta Gorda,Fla. (AP Photo/Scott Martin)

PUNTA GORDA, Fla. (AP) - A stronger-than-expected Hurricane Charley roared ashore Friday as a dangerous Category 4 storm, pounding the heavily populated Gulf Coast with 145 mph wind and towering surges of water expected to swallow up miles of shoreline.

Airports and theme parks hurriedly closed, the Kennedy Space Center sent workers home early, and storm shelters quickly filled up as nearly 2 million people were told to flee ahead of the strongest storm to hit Florida in a decade.

Gov. Jeb Bush estimated that damage could exceed $15 billion and his brother, President Bush, declared the storm-battered region a federal disaster area.

The wind tore apart small airplanes, snapped pine trees in half, blew windows out of cars and homes and churned the gulf like water in a washing machine.

"This is the nightmare scenario that we've been talking about for years," said Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, referring to storm surges up to 20 feet. "You've got roofs blowing off. It's going to be bad. Real bad."

Charley's eye reached land at 3:45 p.m. EDT when it passed over the barrier islands between Fort Myers and Punta Gorda, some 70 miles southeast of the Tampa Bay area. It struck the mainland 30 minutes later.

"We are ground zero for Hurricane Charley," said Wayne Sallade, director of emergency management in Charlotte County.

Earlier, as it blew through the Caribbean, Charley had been blamed for at least four deaths, three in Cuba and one in Jamaica.

By 5 p.m., Charley was centered about 30 miles west-northwest of Fort Myers and 115 miles south-southwest of Orlando. Even though the core of the storm had moved inland, it still packed sustained wind of 140 mph with higher gusts, but was expected to weaken in the next day. Hurricane force-wind of at least 74 mph extended outward 25 miles from the eye.

Charley was moving toward the north-northeast at 22 mph and it could speed up, the National Hurricane Center said. That path would take it through an area with 6.5 million of Florida's 17 million residents. Four to 8 inches of rain was possible.

Hurricane warnings were posted along Florida's west coast and along the Atlantic Coast from Cocoa Beach, just south of Cape Canaveral, all the way to Cape Lookout, N.C.

The hurricane was initially expected to strike as a Category 2 storm, but was upgraded as it approached the coast. Sallade lashed out at forecasters because authorities learned so late that Charley was a Category 4.

"This magnitude storm was never predicted," he said. "(Forecasters) told us for years they don't forecast hurricane intensity well and unfortunately, we know that now."

However, hurricane center meteorologist Hugh Cobb said there had been warnings about the uncertainty of the storm's path, explaining that its direction was influenced by a weather condition called a trough.

"It is very difficult to forecast a turn when you're dealing with a trough," Cobb said. "All along they warned people that they storm could hit Fort Myers on northward."

Residents who had not left were told to stay home or head to shelters, and even the Charlotte County emergency operation center was evacuated as a precaution. Charlotte County sheriff's Capt. Mike Gandy said a handful of sheriff's office employees took shelter in an electrical room after the roof of the administration building blew off. The Cape Coral Hospital in Fort Myers lost much of its roof, Mayor Jim Humphrey told CNN.

"When the ocean decides to meet my bay, that's a lot of water. It's already in my pool," said Lucy Hunter, the hotel operator at the Pink Shell Beach Resort and Spa.

Six resort employees, including Hunter's husband, hunkered down in a room in the hotel's center. "Every now and then you hear a big whistle, but the noise isn't bad," Hunter said before the phone line went dead.

About 335,000 people are without power in southwest Florida, said Kathy Scott, spokeswoman with Florida Power & Light. That number was expected to grow as Charley cuts through the state.

The evacuation rivaled the largest in state history, and Bush urged people in the storm's projected path to keep off highways and roads. He declared a state of emergency and asked his brother, President Bush, to declare a federal state of emergency.

The storm was almost on par with Hurricane Andrew, which smashed into South Florida in 1992 with 165 mph wind, killed 43 people and caused $31 billion in damage.

The storm even affected the nerve center of the war in Iraq, MacDill Air Force Base, where residents evacuated and only essential personnel remained. On the state's Atlantic coast, 10 Navy ships from Mayport Naval Station near Jacksonville were sent out to sea to avoid damage from the storm, the Navy said Friday.

At Cape Canaveral, traffic was bumper-to-bumper at noon as Kennedy Space Center employees left work early. All but a skeleton crew of 200 of the nearly 13,000-person work force was sent home, or told to stay home, and the space shuttle hangars and the massive Vehicle Assembly Building were sealed tight.

In Orlando, theme parks Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando and SeaWorld Orlando, closed in the early afternoon and Disney's Animal Kingdom didn't open at all. The only previous time that the parks closed for a hurricane was in 1999 for Floyd. Guests remaining at hotels were to urged to stay in their rooms.

Amtrak canceled long-distance service between Miami and New York for Saturday, and trains coming from Los Angeles will stop in New Orleans instead of continuing on to Orlando.

Earlier Friday, the heart of storm slid to the west of Key West, sparing the Florida Keys. Charley hit the lower Keys with occasionally heavy rain and gusts of 58 mph but officials reported only minor damage. The Keys will be open to visitors on Saturday, officials said.

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.

Associated Press writers Mark Long in Fort Myers, Ken Thomas in Key West and Vickie Chachere in Sarasota contributed to this report.

On the Net:
National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040813/D84EJNCO1.html