Wearied Floridians wait for hurricane
PUNTA GORDA, Fla. (AP) – First Hurricane Charley rammed Florida’s Gulf Coast a month ago. Then Frances plowed into the Atlantic shore. Now Ivan is threatening to wallop the state again – and Floridians have had enough.
“I think everybody is in shock,” said Christie Brown, helping customers grab supplies at a hardware store where storm-shattered windows are still covered in plywood.
“I lost my whole house in Charley,” Brown said, her eyes growing moist. “I have nothing left to lose to Ivan.”
Ivan lashed Jamaica Saturday with deadly force and headed for the smaller of the Cayman islands and western Cuba.
The storm’s course was erratic but it still had the potential to strike the Florida Keys by late Monday and the state’s mainland by Tuesday.
Charley and Frances, which hit just last Sunday, together had been blamed for the deaths of at least 50 people and about $20 billion in damage.
For many, the approach of Ivan was almost too much to comprehend.
“Nobody wants to talk about it,” Brown said. “Everybody just says they want to get ready for the storm, but nobody wants to say its name.”
Some talked of sending their families away to another state, while others who never boarded up their homes in the previous two storms waited all night at home supply stores to buy plywood to cover their windows.
All over the state, lines for gasoline were long as false rumors spread that the governor had ordered rationing, and there was a rush for bread and milk, which have been scarce since Frances.
“This is the time to prepare, not panic,” Gov. Jeb Bush reiterated. “It is also a time for people of faith to pray.”
Residents of the state’s east coast who were trying to clean up the damage caused by Frances had little time to take notice of impending Hurricane Ivan.
“Not now. Not now,” said Rosemary Senatus, a mother of four whose West Palm Beach home was flooded by Frances. She lined up soggy clothes, shoes, papers and furniture on her lawn to try to salvage something.
Senatus said she didn’t know what the family would do to prepare for Ivan but she knew they couldn’t stay in their flood-prone home. They have been fighting mosquitoes at night while trying to sleep on the mildewed mattress the whole family shares.
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” she said.
The prospect of another hurricane also was straining the state’s two biggest industries, tourism and agriculture.
The board of directors of Visit Florida, the state’s tourism marketing agency, had planned to meet Tuesday to respond to the demands of Charley, but postponed the gathering because of Ivan.
“You have a lot of negative images that are piling on top of each other,” said Tom Flanigan, a spokesman for Visit Florida.
Citrus growers feared Ivan would blow more fruit off trees and flood already saturated groves.
“We’re going to get wetter than a snake,” said Ben Hill Griffin III, one of Florida’s largest growers.
Punta Gorda still has high piles of debris from Charley’s rampage. Broken glass litters downtown sidewalks and small mounds of ruined insulation, aluminum awnings and broken tree limbs dot the landscape.
Philip Blum came to Punta Gorda from a summer home in Oregon to check on damage to the mobile home where he and his wife spend their winters. The couple planned to ride out Ivan in the mobile home and to keep an eye on their neighbors, who probably will not evacuate.
“They are scared,” he said of his neighbors. “A lot of people stayed for the first one and are thinking ‘Oh no, here we go again.’ But where are they going to go? A lot of people can’t afford the extra expense (of evacuating). They’ve got nothing left from their Social Security checks.”