On 8/13/2004 Hurricane Charley swept through SW Florida and caused
tremendous damage along the coast line in FT Meyers, Port Charlotte and other
towns. Charley kind of followed Hwy 17 going north and did lots more damage to
places like Wauchula, Lakeland and our own Arcadia.
Here are a few photos that will give you some idea of how Charley left things
at our house.
It should be noted that we were very blessed and lucky, most of the damage we
suffered was to
the trees, with very little to our house and outbuildings.
Some folks have lost all that they had and some were hurt, or worse, so we
are not about to complain about
the little bit of damage you see in these photos...
And then on 9/4-5-6/2004 we get
Hurricane Frances coming through, not as bad as Charley was with the his
winds, but with lots more rain and moving very slowly.
And...
Frances is HUGE!!!
Several hundred miles across if you include all of the outer winds and rains,
she was covering the whole state of Florida for a while.
To see some of the *Real* destruction caused by Charley check out "Welcome to Arcadia" at the bottom of this page.
And then... The *Christenson Brothers* to our rescue!
No surprise there, they always seem to show up when we need a little help!!!
Remember the Herd of Deere on the
Toys Page???
How's this for a new addition to the Herd!
Mark is ready for some Serious tree pushing!
Need a little rake for them roots??? Got just the Deere for ya.
A couple of pix of Darryl, Charley & his school bud...
Up to their butts in brush and limbs.
Keith seems to be looking for another one of them Deere...
And the low-boy driver is helping Mark get the pusher going.
Ahhh... We need just a little more JD Green paint to make this
Herd look right.
With Frances we came out with lots of water, but almost no damage, whereas
Charley was just the other way around.
But again, we were very blessed and came out with very little to be repaired,
even though the path of Charley was right over us and Frances was really close.
Lots of other folks were not as fortunate, if you watch the news out of Tampa
you will see tremendous destruction that still continues because Frances not
only did a lot of wind damage, but now the floods start and they are covering
large sections of that city.
On the news you hear of the big coastal towns like Tampa, Sarasota and others
and a few of the inland communities like Arcadia and Orlando of course,
but one town that is not receiving much press is Wauchula, FL.
Wauchula is a small town about 35-40 miles up Hwy 17, north of our location.
They were in the cross hairs of both Charley and Frances, catching both storms
dead on and suffering huge amounts of damage from the wind and the rain. This
will be a long recovery process... and the hurricane season has just gotten
started good.
Even though the barn is a little torn up from Charley and now Frances has
flooded the
barnyard...
Bob, Mother Goose & Baby Goose don't seem to mind, looks like just one more
place to swim for them!
This photo was taken in the rain while Frances was on us, so the quality is kind
of low.
Here are a couple of shots that were taken after the weather
began to clear, they came out a little better.
Bob the Goose is the one with the long neck and Mother Goose is in the
foreground of the shot on the left.
These two were not bothered by Charley or Frances, they just
snoozed and rested till the danger was past.
In these photos you can see the standing water Frances left us with, most of the
damage was from Charley.
We rarely have standing water after it rains, even a really heavy downpour will
only leave a puddle or two, it's never been this bad.
Looks like that Deere needs to learn how to tread water!
These pix were taken on a short, two hour trip
I took into Arcadia today (9/7/4) and
are just a very small sampling of what it looks like in and around town.
If you look too the left of the house you can see
the foundation blocks and a portion of the rear wall still standing on the
foundation.
The front end was moved about 30 feet off the blocks and all of the roof is
gone.
This house is located about 1 mile from us.
Another one not to far from us...
After Charley ripped off most of the roof the FEMA crews came in and installed
one of their temporary roof tarps,
then Frances ripped that off and finished trashing out the inside of the house
with rain.
These three pix are showing a warehouse &
outbuilding about 2-3 miles from our house.
No words needed on this one.
The rest of these photos are from inside the town limits.
The entire roof structure was lifted off this
home,
before it looked like the one in the right background.
This old retired military jet serves as the guardian for one of
our local parks.
She's sporting a new list to the right side, with a wing tip to the ground and
the canopy is gone,
but she's still there, still doing her duty.
This street scene doesn't look so special...
unless you know that before the storms the houses could barely
be seen because the trees covered so much of the view.
This nice old home was already being remodeled/refinished
before the two storms took their toll...
The crew never missed a beat, working after both storms to not only repair the
storm damage, but continue to restore
this grand old home to it's full glory. This is Tuesday, the day after Frances
finished coming through and as you can see,
they are on the J.O.B.!!!
Goodbye Charley... Goodbye Frances...
You beat up on us for a little while, but we are still here and
we are putting it all back together again! 
