Anthony Delucia, 25, and his wife of two weeks planned to move out of their home in St. Petersburg's Shore Acres today and relocate to Missouri.
But with the northeast St. Petersburg neighborhood under an evacuation order, the newlyweds prepared to get out on Thursday. When Delucia tried to rent a U-Haul truck he ran into a crush of residents also trying to evacuate with as many belongings as possible.
"We just want to get out of Shore Acres," Delucia said Thursday afternoon as he awaited word from U-Haul officials.
As Hurricane Charley churned through the Caribbean toward the Gulf Coast, Tampa Bay area residents living in evacuation areas hurriedly boarded and taped windows and doors, fled to hotel rooms, filled vehicles and containers with gas and petroleum, waited in line for hours for sand and stocked up on hurricane essentials such as water and nonperishable foods. Hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living facilities scrambled to relocate patients and residents.
Along Bayshore Boulevard in Tampa, picturesque windows were covered in plain, practical plywood. In Hyde Park, some residents started boarding up - even as others went about life as usual. At a few homes, work crews continued fixing roofs and manicuring lawns.
Some residents in evacuation zones said they planned to remain in their homes, in some instances out of defiance, in others out of necessity.
But many were heeding the order. Worried homeowners packed hardware stores and searched for plywood and plastic wrap.
Richard Leo, 22, sat on 62nd Avenue N in St. Petersburg for more than two hours waiting for sand. "If you can save the house with a couple of sandbags it's worth it," Leo, who planned to evacuate his Shore Acres house, said of the wait.
Hospital officials were shuffling patients. At Palms of Pasadena Hospital, officials sent 54 patients to St. Anthony's Hospital and 22 to Edward White Hospital in St. Petersburg. The hospital, which discharged other patients, is in the evacuation zone and was to close temporarily after the last patient was transferred.
In Tampa, officials at Tampa General Hospital on Davis Islands moved medical records and equipment from the basement. Less seriously ill patients were discharged, and others were transferred to other area hospitals with space.
Patients on lower floors were moved higher, and elective surgeries for today were canceled. But there were no plans for a full evacuation of Tampa General.
"Our plan is to try to stay put and ride it out," hospital spokesman John Dunn said.
The Pinellas Emergency Operations Center designated 17 nursing homes that would be ordered to evacuate.
Other bay area residents planned to stay put in their homes in evacuation zones.
At the BP station on Fourth Street near 62nd Avenue N in St. Petersburg, Mark Hillis hurriedly filled four 6-gallon containers with gas for the generator he plans to use if the power goes out at his Venetian Isles home.
"I've got the house boarded up, sandbags, gas generator, food and water for three days," Hillis, 44, said as he loaded the full containers onto the bed of his pickup truck.
"I got all the precautions to survive without going to a shelter."
At Chapman's mobile home park on 28th Street N in St. Petersburg, Phyllis Storck leaned back on the sofa in her living room, lit a cigarette and watched a TV movie, Kill Me If You Can.
"I got tired of watching the hurricane," the 69-year-old widow said. "Am I worried? Nah. I went through all this before and all we got was a cotton-pickin' 80 mph wind. And all it did was rock me to sleep."
In Ruskin, Ron Coon boarded up the windows to his waterfront home with a sense of foreboding. He built the robin's-egg blue house 41/2 years ago, facing a canal leading to Tampa Bay on one side and the already swollen Little Manatee River on the other.
"I'd like to say it's not going to be a bad one, but we're overdue," said Coon, 56. "It's Friday the 13th, and I would expect anything could happen."
Times staff writers Tom Zucco, Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler, Letitia Stein and Michelle Jones contributed to this report.
National Hurricane Center
