Hurricane Charley’s 20th Anniversary

”You can’t plan for the unforeseen. God doesn’t follow the linear directions of computer models. And these are powerful storms that don’t behave in any kind of way that you can say with certainty where they’re going to go.” – Jeb Bush, FL GOV. 2004

Friday The Thirteenth. 2004. It was scary.

Hurricane Charley was the first of four separate hurricanes to impact or strike Florida during 2004, along with Frances, Ivan and Jeanne, as well as one of the strongest hurricanes ever to strike the United States. It was the third named storm, the second hurricane, and the second major hurricane of the 2004 Atlantic hurricane season.

But if you were living here twenty years ago, you didn’t know those other three were on their way.

Didn’t matter. After Charley, nothing was ever the same again.

What happened was, the storm doesn’t watch the Weather Channel. Sarasota evacuated to Wauchula. Charley decided to hang a hard right at the entrance to the Peace River, shot through Punta Gorda – SO HARD they were talking about two hundred mile per hour cyclones – powered through Charlotte County, hung a hard left north and shortly thereafter took out the Wauchula storm shelter where the Sarasota people were waiting.

Remember hearing we lost nearly one hundred traffic lights, most never to be found again.

Oh, look, there’s a big bear in the canal out back and over there a freezer chest on the tenth green.

Next to the catamaran cabin cruiser.

From the coastal retirement town of Punta Gorda to the rural hamlet of Arcadia, 40 miles inland, stunned residents assessed a landscape heedlessly rearranged by a hurricane they had never expected to come so close, since forecasters predicted it would hit farther north.

The center of the forecast cone (the “thin black line”), targeted the Tampa/St. Petersburg metro for a time on August 12. The largest evacuation in Pinellas County history resulted. In all, about 1.9 million Floridians were urged to evacuate. The narrative had been written in the media for a Tampa/St. Pete. landfall. 

About a million homes from Naples to Daytona Beach remained without electricity late Saturday afternoon, while many also lacked phone service and running water. Or a roof.

My house was spared, I lived a few miles north. But these were my people, my clientele, my Kiwanis’ club.

All three major hospitals in Charlotte County were out of commission because of storm damage, local officials said, as were many fire departments and the county’s emergency management office.

When I finally got to my office, it was completely demolished. Never went back.

When I could make my way to a client’s home, I found both husband and wife in one end of their pool – most of the neighbor’s tile roof filled the other end – calmly sipping GIANT glasses of Rum Punch. A classy couple, both in the midst of cancer battles, they finally managed to calm me down.

The Italian-American Club was destroyed, so the next meeting of Kiwanis was held in a motel parking lot where we pledged allegiance to my Stars & Stripes tie.

Life was lost, lives were changed. Ripple effect is real.

After my divorce – no connection though she thought I only joined Kiwanis for the girls – the next spring, I moved to Punta Gorda. Where I was bumped up the Kiwanis ladder because the Vice-President’s roof was still gone, and his wife was so sick, and he was still slowly rebuilding his business.

So, anyway, I was obligated to attend the State Convention in Tampa where I wore a name tag and there was a sock hop. It’s true. I was not drunk enough to go downtown with four chunky jolly black ladies, no matter how much they pleaded. Also true.

I was alone when this cute little blonde sat down and asked, “So, how is Jack doing tonight.?”

“Fine, now that you’re here,” I told her.

I like cute little blondes. And, no, this doesn’t make the ex-wife prescient.

But if not for Hurricane Charley, I would not be happily married today. To that same little blonde.

Ripple effect, and happy anniversary, Charley.

You magnificent sorry-ass bastard.