Hurricane Charley blew out of Florida on Saturday leaving death and destruction in its wake.
The storm had battered the US coast with an unexpected wind force and a 15ft-high surge of seawater that destroyed airports, hospitals and homes. Initial estimates of fatalities ranged from dozens to more than 200. It was the worst storm to hit the state in more than 40 years and cut power to 1,3-million homes and businesses as it swept from south-west Florida to the Atlantic coast at Daytona Beach. President George Bush declared the region a major disaster area.
Punta Gorda, a town of 15 000 people 70 miles south of Tampa Bay on Florida’s south-west coast, took the most savage hit with winds of more than 145mph. The local sheriff’s office said 60 body bags had been requested.
As rescue teams with lifting machinery arrived at the town and its neighbouring Gulf coast towns of Fort Myers and Port Charlotte, officials said that it was too early to know how many had died but 25 morticians with refrigerated trucks had been called in. There are 31 mobile home parks in Punta Gorda alone, at least two with up to 1 000 residents each. The director of emergency services in the area, Wayne Sallade, said it would take days to trace those still unaccounted for. ”We believe there is significant loss of life,” he said.
Many residents are retired people living in mobile homes who decided not to leave after Charley was expected to be a relatively low ‘category two’ hurricane. In fact, it struck with unexpected ferocity as a ‘category four’.
Computer predictions had also wrongly predicted Charley — which had already killed three people in Cuba and one in Jamaica — would hit the land in the Tampa Bay area and nearly two million people there were urged to leave their seaside homes and head inland. But Charley swung south and drove across country towards Orlando, the centre of the Disney tourist complex, and one of the areas to have attracted the largest number of evacuees. The area was also hit simultaneously by tornadoes.
”This is beautifully terrifying,” said Evan Lyon (21) a Canadian tourist, as he filmed from the entrance area of the Renaissance Hotel. ”It’s kind of fun but it’s probably different if you live here.” Lyon, like many in the hotel, had been evacuated from Tampa.
The Fitzpatrick family, from Jordanhill in Glasgow, said that they had also been evacuated to Orlando from their holiday location in Longboat Key to the north of Port Charlotte only to find that the storm had followed them. They watched it lashing past from their hotel entrance. ”It was better than Disney,” said Christine Fitzpatrick.
Earlier in the week, the Florida governor, Jeb Bush, declared a state of emer gency and mobilised the National Guard. On Saturday he predicted that the cost of the damage would reach at least $15-billion. The airport at Lake Wales was seriously damaged.
More than two million people in the state lost power as Charley reached Daytona Beach on the state’s Atlantic coast. Charley then headed for South Carolina as it left Florida, prompting further evacuations.
At the same time, on the other side of the world, rescue workers in eastern China were still searching for the victims of massive typhoons that hit on Thursday, killing 115 people and injuring more than 1 800.
Residents in the rice-growing province of Zhejiang woke up to power cuts, uprooted trees and collapsed houses after Typhoon Rananim cut a swathe of destruction with torrential rain and gale-force winds. More than 40 000 buildings were flattened.
”The power supply has still not yet resumed in all parts of the city. It’s hot and humid outside,” a nurse at the Taizhou city central hospital said. The storm has weakened and moved inland to the province of Jiangxi, but the death toll is expected to rise, officials said. More than 8,6-million people had been affected by the storm. Most were injured by shattered glass or buried under collapsed houses.
Officials evacuated more than 460 000 people from coastal areas of Zhejiang province to escape the storm.
The typhoon caused more than 15,3-billion yuan (R11-billion) of damage in direct economic losses, the country’s official Xinhua news agency said yesterday. – Guardian Unlimited Â