The winds here in Orlando were at about 90 MPH when it hit. The was a lot of destruction, but somehow my house and property ended up completely unscathed. The worst part lasted 45 minutes. I just sat in the dark with my cat and a bottle of wine watching the whole thing out the window. It was really crazy. Saw the trees flapping around and then I kept seeing flashes of blue and green in the sky ... I thought this was some strange lightning but found out later it was actually electrical transformers exploding across the neighborhood. Wow.

I've been through at least 3 hurricanes in my life and have never seen anything like this either. The city is like a warzone with debris and fallen trees and power lines everywhere. It was starting to get cleaned up as I left home yesterday, so hopefully when I return all will be back to normal. I can't even imagine what it looks like down south in the Ft. Meyers area, which received the full force of the storm. It actually weakened a bit before it hit central Florida.

My business partner has a 30 foot tree laying in his backyard. Another friend has a tree about that big in his swimming pool (no idea how he'll get that out). Yet another friend lives in a neighborhood that is in a 'dead end' road. A huge tree has fallen in the path of their only exit, and they can only leave by foot. I guess I got off easy. None of us have any power, though.

The storm was followed by eerie silence and the even eerier sight of my neighborhood residents walking the lightless streets, Night Of The Living Dead-style, surveying the damage. A friend of mine owned a bar that miraculously had power so after a few phone calls we convened there 90 minutes after the hurricane's end. About 60 people showed and I started playing records and doing vodka shots. This had the makings of a really nice party as a ton of frustration and stress was being expelled by all. We were stopped at about 1 AM by a number of cops who claimed the city was in a state of emergency and there was a curfew in effect all over the city. We either left the party or we were to be arrested. Thus we were ordered to tipsily navigate the darkened, traffic light-less, wreckage covered streets to our hot, powerless, and, in some cases, devastated homes. You think the 'man' would give us a break.

Update: an anonymous BB reader sends in this wmv file -- a composite of time-lapse stills of Hurricane Charley hitting Florida over the span of about seven hours. Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:50:39 AM permalink | Other blogs commenting on this post