No shelter for Charlie Landfallers..

[Aquawind]

That's right..They didn't have a shelter for the Charley Landfall in...Charlotte County of all places(granted small pop)..looks like they might figure something out now..little late folks..but progress none the less..


Charlotte may get storm shelter

Plans come from discussion on ways to promote evacuations

By MARY WOZNIAK
MWOZNIAK@NEWS-PRESS.COM
Published by news-press.com on April 21, 2005

Charlotte County may get its first hurricane shelter at the cafeteria of Kingsway Elementary School in Port Charlotte.

The school, at 23300 Quasar Blvd., is 23 feet above sea level and its cafeteria could house 350 to 500 people, Wayne Sallade, emergency management director for Charlotte County, said Wednesday.

Charlotte County currently has no certified shelters because the elevation is too low in most areas. At 23 feet, Kingsway has the highest elevation of any county or school district-owned structure in the county.

The announcement came after Sallade and two Lee County emergency management officials met at the Lee emergency management offices on Ortiz Road to discuss ways to encourage people to evacuate their homes when a hurricane threatens.

Cape Coral Fire Chief Bill Van Helden asked for Wednesday's meeting after he heard a Florida State University professor tell the recent National Hurricane Conference about how few residents paid heed to evacuation calls in Southwest Florida as Hurricane Charley came barreling up the coast. The storm made landfall Aug. 13.

John Wilson, Lee County public safety director, was host for the meeting Wednesday.

"We're not motivating people to move. I don't know if it's garbled, confusing," Wilson said of the order to evacuate. "In Southwest Florida, we had less than 40 percent people in a Category 1 (hurricane) zone evacuate in the face of a Category 2 hurricane."

The research work was done by Jay Baker, a geography professor at Florida State who also studies residents' reactions to evacuations.

He found that many people either didn't hear the calls to evacuate or didn't pay attention.

People either didn't perceive threat or were overconfident in their home's ability to survive the threat, Wilson said.

"That isn't right."

So the three decided to meet with area media representatives to develop a plan to get evacuation messages out to people in a way that will make them listen.

"We need to have what we all used to call a 'Come to Jesus' meeting," Sallade said. "I don't know what the persuasion mechanism can be."

Experience from previous storms can help, he said.

http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll ... /WEATHER01

Paul..

[alicia-w]

There are only a couple of shelters in Okaloosa County too and they are in Crestview. There were several in the southern part of the county but they were inspected/evaluated and it was determined that the structures were insufficient to handle storm-strength winds.

[Orlando_wx]

My aunt lives in Punta Gorda and she said she had no place to go either and she live in a mobile home and i just got back from visiting there it's been totally rearrange most of the fast food places are still destroyed and very few have just open back up for business last month i also have and hour worth of footage the day after the storm the in this mobile home park i and trying to get some clips to put up on my site if any one is interested in seeing it.
John

[CentralFlGal]

My aunt lives in Punta Gorda and she said she had no place to go either and she live in a mobile home and i just got back from visiting there it's been totally rearrange most of the fast food places are still destroyed and very few have just open back up for business last month i also have and hour worth of footage the day after the storm the in this mobile home park i and trying to get some clips to put up on my site if any one is interested in seeing it.
John

I would be interested.