Well it pretty much missed Tampa (though they will have had heavy rain and strong winds even so) so Kate's family should be OK.
Orlando did cop it, but most proper buildings resist, it's the trailer parks etc that get the worst damage; Hula's and sunny's families (and everybody else of course) will have had a terrible evening and night but should also be OK, if stunned.
Florida houses can't have basements because of the risk of flooding so they can't shelter in there but I think they usually have at least one internal bathroom with no windows and at worst they can retreat to that.
New York Times:
TAMPA, Fla., Aug. 13 - A ferocious hurricane packing winds of 145 miles an hour ripped into Florida's west coast on Friday, leaving a half million people without power, flipping roofs off houses, blowing out hospital windows and peeling brick walls from their frames. A 15-foot storm surge followed in its wake.
Hurricane Charley, the most intense storm to hit Florida since Hurricane Andrew devastated South Florida in 1992 and the worst on the west coast of Florida in at least a century, prompted state and local officials to order the evacuation of nearly two million people all along the heavily populated coast.
The storm screamed through Charlotte Harbor, about 90 miles south of Tampa, and headed straight for Orlando, slightly weakened but still at hurricane strength. It spared the densely populated Tampa Bay area, full of modern high-rises and waterfront condos, which had expected to be hardest hit.
By early evening, Florida officials estimated the property damage to be $14.5 billion and attributed another $2.3 billion in losses to business interruptions. The officials estimated that 377,000 buildings were damaged. Officials in various counties said they had heard reports of injuries but the state emergency management office said it was still compiling figures. Before the storm hit Florida, three people were reported killed in Cuba.
Schools, universities, airports, SeaWorld and Disney World closed, the Kennedy Space Center sent employees home early, and passenger train service between Miami and New York was canceled. Tornado warnings were issued for south-central Florida, and the storm drenched ground already saturated by recent rains, increasing the risk of floods. At the request of Gov. Jeb Bush, President Bush declared the region a federal disaster area.
At one point Governor Bush said the damage could exceed $15 billion, but he became more optimistic after the hurricane missed the Tampa area. "There will be ramifications for this for many families in our state for months ahead," he said. "And we are going to be prepared to provide support."
As the storm advanced, traveling faster than 20 m.p.h., eastern Florida residents made preparations while those on the west coast were already assessing the damage.
Residents who lived in mobile homes or prefabricated homes and in low-lying areas were evacuated. In Orlando, three out of the five shelters in local schools were closed to newcomers because they were full, officials said.
On the Saffir-Simpson scale, used by meteorologists to denote hurricane strength, Hurricane Charley was rated a Category 4 when it made landfall. A Category 4 hurricane has sustained winds of 131 to 155 m.p.h.
As the storm hit La Costa Island, west of Fort Myers, about 3:45 p.m., sheets of rain wiped out any visibility and lawns turned into ponds, but the worst damage came from high winds. Waves tossed boats as if they were made of balsa wood, and small planes were flipped. The howling wind could be heard inside shelters where residents hunkered down, waiting for the worst to pass.
"It's something like you've never heard before," said Matt Rechkemmer, the 911 coordinator for Lee County, where Fort Myers is located. "It's a constant whining sound, it's sustained, to the point where it just doesn't even seem real. I've been in Lee County for 20 years and I've never heard winds and seen rain like that before."
Hurricane Charley sheared the roof from a shelter where 1,200 had sought safety. It stole the door from a nursing home in Port Charlotte, and Charlotte County's emergency operations center had to decamp to a jail. An overturned fire truck was another indication of the hurricane's might.
The center of the hurricane passed near Orlando around 10 p.m. with sustained winds of about 90 m.ph., according to the National Hurricane Center near Miami. At 11 p.m. the storm was near Daytona Beach and was expected to be near or over the South Carolina coast by morning. A hurricane warning was in effect from Cocoa Beach, Fla., to Oregon Inlet in North Carolina.
A state of emergency was declared in North Carolina and South Carolina as rainfall of 3 to 6 inches was expected along the storm's path.
The hurricane center forecast that Hurricane Charley would continue along the coast, weakening to a tropical storm with sustained winds of 39 to 73 m.p.h. by Saturday night. It could pass near New York City on Sunday, and by Sunday night, near Maine, the storm was expected to be a tropical depression, with winds below 39 m.p.h.
The Florida National Guard activated 5,000 troops, saying it expected the destruction to approach that of Hurricane Andrew, which caused $25 billion in damage and killed more than 60 people. The Guard deployed special teams trained in policing and security, as well as search and rescue and humanitarian aid.
During an early evening news conference, Governor Bush described the storm as devastating. "People on the east coast as well as central Florida need to take this storm very, very seriously," he said. "These winds will be Category 2 winds by the time they reach central Florida. Those are still powerful winds."
Hurricane Charley screamed across Cuba early Friday, ripping apart roofs, yanking up huge palm trees and killing three people. Throughout much of the morning it appeared to be heading straight for Tampa Bay. But then the storm turned abruptly to the east, sending people in Charlotte and Lee Counties scurrying into shelters.
The storm was the second to hit Florida in just over 24 hours. The first, Tropical Storm Bonnie, was less severe than expected, but spun off tornadoes Friday that killed three in North Carolina and injured more than two dozen.
Perhaps because of the memory of Hurricane Andrew in 1992, officials said, many of the 1.9 million residents who were urged to flee the coast heeded the call, filling area hotels and shelters. On Madeira Beach near St. Petersburg, plywood covering a business window was spray-painted with the words, "Sorry Charlie, We've Gone Home." Over all, officials said some 45,000 people took refuge in public shelters.
There were, of course, some holdouts. Carl and Betty Wieczorek live on Pass-a-Grille Beach near St. Petersburg, an island that was thought to have been wiped out in 1921 after the last bad storm, an unnamed Category 3 hurricane, hit Tampa Bay. It was a few days before boaters found it was still there.
But the Wieczoreks are newcomers to Florida, and said they did not have the money to go to a hotel and did not want to go to a shelter because their Doberman pinscher and parrot would not be allowed.
Most of all, the Wieczoreks said, they did not want to leave their uninsured collectibles. "We've got thousands of antiques that we haven't even unboxed yet," Mr. Wieczorek said. "I figure if the water comes in and we're here, we can at least lift things up to keep them from getting wet."
In Punta Gorda on Charlotte Harbor, Susan Evans decided not to leave her 1920's wood-frame house despite a mandatory evacuation in her area. "They told me I was required to leave, and when I told them I was staying, they asked me to name my next of kin," she said. "That really freaked me out."
After spending two hours of the storm in her bedroom closet, underneath a queen-size mattress, she said she would never make that mistake again.
"I felt like the house was lifting me," Ms. Evans said. "I didn't think anything could lift like that."
When she emerged to inspect the damage, she saw that two of her palm trees had been uprooted, and the second floor of the house across the street had been demolished.
At the nearby Temple Bar, Kevan Doyle, the owner, continued to serve beer throughout the storm, even after the second-floor roof collapsed and tankards and pitchers were set out to catch the leaks. By Friday evening, his only customers were storm chasers who had sought out Hurricane Charley with their video cameras.
Still, even places that did not feel the brunt of the storm remained on high alert. Tampa General Hospital canceled all elective surgeries, brought in extra staff and stopped accepting new patients, said John Dunn, a hospital spokesman.
"We were bracing for storm surge of 14 to 16 feet, so our collective blood pressure has dropped considerably," Mr. Dunn said. A storm surge is the difference between normal high tide and the storm tide.
In Pinellas County, horse owners evacuated their mounts to a county park on high ground. More than 50 horses waited out the storm, grazing around swing sets and picnic pavilions. Welch Agnew, assistant director of Pinellas County Animal Services, said animal specialists learned from Hurricane Andrew that stables can be more hazardous than helpful in a hurricane. "Most stables are less secure than a mobile home," he said. "In an open field, the horse will turn its rear to the storm, and ride it out."
In Arcadia, about 40 miles from the coast, residents emerged after the storm to watch a golden sunset. Arcadia is a small town with century-old oak trees, antique shops and ice cream parlors lining Oak Street downtown, and old-fashioned wood-framed homes. It feels historic in a state where most everything is new.
But Arcadia lost much of its history when the hurricane hit on Friday, clearing away trees, battering proud buildings so badly that their bricks spilled into the streets and shocking residents who thought living inland made them safe.
Robert Van Kempen, 68, weathered the storm in the 100-year-old Heritage Baptist Church. When the stained glass windows shattered, he and the others moved to a small concrete room in the back. "It was very scary. Once you go through this, you don't want to go through it again," Mr. Van Kempen said. "We were huddled together, we didn't know each other, but we were huddled together for dear life."