The town clock was still stuck at 4.26pm, the exact time when the sleepy palm-fringed community of Punta Gorda bore the brunt of Hurricane Charley and the 230kph winds that came with it.
On Sunday those who survived the storm were counting their blessings and their insurance premiums, and those who were evacuated were tip-toeing back to see what was left of their homes.
Hurricane Charley — one of the worst in living memory — has taken at least 20 lives so far, one in Jamaica, three in Cuba and 16 in Florida. Those who perished included some who were hit by falling trees, were flipped over in their trucks as they fled or were electrocuted by fallen power cables.
The signposts to Punta Gorda were twisted, as though a retreating army had obscured the route. The trees beside Highway 75 looked as though they had been scythed by some other-worldly chainsaw. All around, in the trailer parks in the main town, mobile homes could be seen to have lived up to their description all too literally.
The area has been officially declared a disaster zone, with early estimates suggesting that the damage already runs into billions of dollars.
How many people have died here or in other parts of Florida will only be known in the coming days, when workers start sifting through the debris. Health officials in some areas have ordered more body bags, just in case.
”This place will never be the same,” said Dan Strong (51) surveying the rubble of what was his house. ”My home and this neighbourhood can be rebuilt, but not like they were. We’ve lost too much.”
On Sunday, those who survived the winds that tore the town apart on Friday described being terrified by the ferocity of a storm that was not expected to hit Punta Gorda at all.
”When the storm came over, I could see the walls flexing,” said Nolan Wehmueller (65) who moved to the area from St Louis, Missouri, 18 years ago. ”It was a terrible noise. You can’t even describe. The roof caved in, in the front of the house.”
He had considered the advice to evacuate, but he and his wife stayed because of their animals. ”The storm tore up every tree in the yard and stripped our 80ft Norfolk Island pine like it was a telegraph pole. There were times when we just grabbed pillows and threw them over our heads.”
Kyle Kilgallon, who works in the boat-lifting business, said he had had to sign an affidavit after declining to evacuate so as to take care of a friend in a wheelchair. ”I told my mother it looks like Iraq came over and bombed the shit out of us,” he said. ”It was like a freight train coming through but the house held up good.”
Wendel Palmer, a restaurateur, from Jamaica, said: ”It was like a good experience because people say you can’t see the wind but I saw the wind. It was awesome.” He said it was important that people realised that ”in Bangladesh they have just had something like this and lots of people were killed so we have to consider ourselves lucky”.
Chris Fletcher, manager of the River City Grill, said: ”It was completely unimaginable. This was voted one of the best places to retire to in Money magazine. Rape, murder and mayhem, we don’t have that here. It was just a sleepy town. Now we’ll have to see what sort of an inner person it brings out in most of us.”
Sunday was the calm after the storm, with fleets of national guardsmen, tree cutters from Oklahoma City and power trucks arriving to start the rescue.
In the morning George Bush arrived in a motorcade, a convoy of flashing blue lights and black four-wheel-drives with radio masts the height of some of the lampposts now lying in the gutters. It was his second visit in less than a week to a crucial state in the presidential election, and he called for ”God’s blessings” on all those hit by the hurricane.
With state officials estimating that the damage to property will range from $5-billion to $11-billion, President Bush said: ”A lot of people’s lives are turned upside down.”
When asked whether there were any political undertones to his quick trip to the state, the president said: ”If I didn’t come, they would have said we should have been here more rapidly.” His brother Jeb Bush, Florida’s governor, added: ”It’s just hard to describe seeing an entire community totally flattened.”
Gabriel Cosea (21) a local chef offering to help feed the homeless, said the arriving storm had ”a really strong whistle, then you heard everything crash, windows breaking, roofs coming off”.
Angie and Britt Matthiessen moved to the area from Georgia, attracted by the palm trees on the main street. They ended up in a shelter as Charley blew most of the trees away. ”We were under the table with an air mattress tied over it,” Matthiessen said. Her husband said computer predictions were that the hurricane would strike land 112km to the north. ”But it’s mother nature; you can’t predict with 100% accuracy.”
The sun was shining on Punta Gorda again on Sunday as people began clearing up in the wake of a hurricane that made a mockery of human-based predictions. – Guardian Unlimited Â