Hurricane Charley

Hurricane Charley, August 13th, 2004

When this Category 4 hurricane hit the Gulf Coast near Sanibel Island and Fort Myers, it blew right inland and hit Orlando metropolitan Area as a Category 2

These are mostly local pictures around our apartment complex in the North Orlando Area. Most of town looks like this all over.Saturday morning, at about 8 am, I went out to survey the damage.

NOTE: The thumbnails are big enough to get an idea of the scene, however, clicking on them will present a bigger picture


Looking north, towards neighbors places
Uprooted tree in the center section between our building and the next one north
Still walking north...
Continuing North
A look east at the end of the buildings
A look back towards the north, where our complex meets a housing area
At the far north edge of the complex another downed tree
A stump left from a tree that fell the week before from all the thunderstorms
More tree shrapnel
Pool furniture in a safe location. This was done on purpose to keep them out of the wind
The front of the complex
More of the front
The car ports didnt fair too well either
This one is sagging
Another downed branch.
More twisted Plants
Another carport
The carport close to us, by far the worst hit
The fence of the Condos behind our apartment
Our flood zone, it always looks like this after storms
A boat not chained down, we hear it was spinning on the motor the night of the hurricane
More stuff that was outside
More downed Fence
This tree was right next to a building (in between two)
More downed fence
Fence between our complex and housing
More carport Damage
Another branch down
More plants in dis-array
The shingles that got torn up
The one broken window here (in the front)
More of the Front of the complex
Branches broken in the tree out front
You can barely see the sidewalk for all the downed branches.
A neighbors car, a branch fell and hit pretty hard
The One severly damaged apartment...
Busted balloons by the front office
Our Favorite occurance in the complex. A chair in the tree 20 to 30 feet up
A power pole hanging in the balance
A branch leaning against the club house
More downed fences by the clubhouse in the back
The boat that spun, And behind that, notice the chain link fence. those trees that appear some 4 feet or more away were swinging so far as to bend that fence.

The neighborhood really pulled together on this. We had a propane tank, but our grill didnt work. The next door neighbor had a grill, but his tank was empty. We had a great breakfast of bacon, eggs, sausage, instant coffee. About 6 apartments pooled resources and ate together. None of us had everything to be completely self-sufficient, but together, we had all we needed.
Neighbor cooking
Neighbor still cooking
The Whole Breakfast layout
A view of the hangout for most of the weekend

As I can, I will get picture from other parts of town, although this is a good representative sample of all of Orlando, it pretty much looks like this all over town.

A tree at work