05/22/06

The face of fear is Charley's lingering legacy

ARCADIA -- "I can't go through another one," Lory Hart says.

She's speaking of a hurricane the magnitude of 2004's Hurricane Charley. In that devastating storm, Hart lost her mobile home to winds that first lifted it off its block foundation and then smashed it back down, piercing the flooring with those blocks.

Months ago, Hart completed a survey on hurricane stress done by the University of South Florida. In that survey, Hart is among the 8 out of 10 who reported they panicked during the storm.

She's also among the nearly half of the survey's 300 parents who said they feared for their own death, or that of their child.

Her 12-year-daughter, Barbara, still had stress months after Charley, waking up from nightmares, reliving terrible times.

"She's getting back to normal now," the 42-year-old Hart said Friday. "But I'm still afraid as we start another hurricane season."

Part of Hart's distress is the fact that she doesn't have a permanent home. Her address now is a mobile home in a park the Federal Emergency Management Agency set up on the south side of Fiveash Street, near DeSoto Memorial Hospital.

"This is gorgeous," she said of her FEMA mobile home. "I'd like to buy it, but I have no place to put it."

But she said she doesn't want to be in it if another hurricane heads for this area.

Hart took part in the university study after her daughter brought home a questionnaire handed out in three DeSoto County elementary schools. The survey was available in both English and Spanish and participation was voluntary, on an anonymous basis, if desired.

It attempted to measure the effects Charley still had on residents eight months after the Aug. 13, 2004, landfall.

Hart's daughter Barbara is one of the 78 percent of children who said they had symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Girls reported stress in greater numbers than boys, the survey released last week concluded.

How to deal with that stress remained a question.

Half of those surveyed said they didn't feel counseling would help.

Hart sees the effects of Charley even in the behavior of her cat. The animal becomes spooked with each approaching storm now. Many animal owners have reported the same -- horses spooked in fields as thunderstorms approach, the same horses that weren't frightened before Charley uprooted their world.

On the morning of August's memorable Friday the 13th, Hart was assistant manager of Taco Bell on State Road 70 east of Arcadia. She was aware of Charley's approach and drove to a grocery store to buy two weeks' worth of supplies.

"Barbara and I brought in some yard things," she added, as she watched the hurricane move closer to Florida.

On that day, Hart, her daughter and husband Robert lived in a mobile home in Arcadia's Park Place. Hart knew that wasn't safe. Robert was at work, so Lory and Barbara left to take shelter in a friend's house.

From the safety of that house, she watched Charley tear apart a neighborhood.

Afterward, she attempted to return to Park Place, to see how her mobile home had fared. It took her two hours to drive the short distance, dodging debris and detouring on unrecognizable streets.

"The trailer was there," she began, "but the windows were shattered. There was glass in the walls and this damp smell everywhere. Then we found that the winds had picked up the trailer and dropped it on blocks that came through the floor. We knew we couldn't live there."

She quit her job.

"Taco Bell was all messed up, so how am I supposed to make tacos? They didn't have any power, so what am I supposed to do? I can't make tacos without power." She and her daughter left to stay with friends in Tennessee.

It was anything but pleasant. Her mind returned daily to DeSoto County.

"Frankly, there was more stress up there," Hart said. "There were seven people, 10 dogs, three cats, four bunnies, a rooster, a chicken and a pot-bellied pig living in a 27-foot travel trailer."

After a month, Hart returned to Arcadia and briefly tried to live in her trailer in Park Place.

"But the mold was everywhere," she said. "And both my daughter and I have asthma. We couldn't take it. Then someone asked me if I'd contacted FEMA. I said 'FEMA'?"

FEMA, she said, was immediately helpful and called her shortly afterward to ask when she'd like to occupy a mobile home.

"How about today?" she responded.

That's how she came to be in unit 19, a place she said she loves and is grateful to have. Her family is now looking for other housing, "but nothing in Arcadia is affordable," she added. She said she can't find a decent-paying job in DeSoto, either.

"If I worked in Port Charlotte, I could earn $500 or $600 a week," she said. "But here ...."

And then there's the matter of yet another possibly active hurricane season fast approaching.

"I don't want to go through another," she repeated. "I'd move out of the state first. But then I don't want to go up north where all the tornadoes are."

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You can e-mail Robert Bowden at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

By ROBERT BOWDEN

Staff Writer

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