PUNTA GORDA - Lost electricity and wind damage from Hurricane Charley forced the closure of Charlotte County's three hospitals Saturday as doctors ferried patients out of harm's way.
Through the day, medical helicopters and convoys of ambulances brought patients north to hospitals in Manatee, Hillsborough and other counties.
Federal emergency management officials erected tents at the facilities to treat emergency patients. Once stable, even those patients were to be sent elsewhere, officials said.
Administrators did not know when the hospitals could reopen.
All three Charlotte hospitals - Charlotte Regional Medical Center, Fawcett Memorial Hospital and Bon Secours-St. Joseph Hospital - were damaged. Charlotte Regional in downtown Punta Gorda was the hardest hit, with serious damage and windows blown out, hospital spokeswoman Danielle Dreher said.
None of the three hospitals reported any fatalities from Hurricane Charley, though all treated dozens of injuries.
At Charlotte Memorial, 50 people came to the emergency room in the hours after hurricane landfall. There were bruises, broken bones, cuts and a few head injuries, the hospital reported. None was considered life-threatening.
Numbers of injured were unavailable from the two other hospitals.
Patients and staff members, many of whom brought family members and even some pets to ride out the storm at the hospitals, were unhurt.
"It's amazing," said Josh Putter, executive director of Charlotte Memorial. "We did really good overall until the windows blew out. We moved everyone into the halls. It got scary for a while."
By midafternoon Saturday, Charlotte Memorial had just five patients awaiting transfer and they were expected to be evacuated within hours.
National Guard troops arrived to guard against looters after the hospital was empty. A small group of hospital staff members cheered as the troops arrived.
Before the storm, the hospital had 105 patients. Dreher said the hospital began releasing patients stable enough to go home before the storm.
At Fawcett, 137 patients rode out the storm along with 291 family members of patients and staff. There were 25 dogs, cats, birds and other pets.
"Everybody made it through fine without a scratch," said Tom Rice, its chief executive officer.
The hospital's emergency room will remain open as long as possible, officials said.
Bon Secours-St. Joseph planned to evacuate 103 patients, though it had only moved 35 by late Saturday afternoon, said spokeswoman Korinne Carpino.
Gary Miles, a spokesman for Bon Secours-St. Joseph, said hospital officials made the call to evacuate all of the acute care patients because they could not immediately determine the extent of the damage to the facilities.
The hospital is transferring patients to Manatee Memorial and to hospitals in Sarasota, he said. More than 100 were evacuated.
The hospital is continuing to run its emergency room, however.
"We have a fully functional (emergency) facility, and as far as I know, the only functional emergency department in Charlotte County," Miles said.
As of mid morning Saturday, no critical injuries had been seen at the emergency room, he said.
Doctors, staffers and their families spent the Friday night at the hospital, and glass from car windows littered the parking lot.
The hospital was running on generator power and mostly without functional plumbing because of the lack of water service across the county.
Throughout the morning, Charlotte County residents brought in their personal oxygen tanks to be filled. The hospital referred them to the county emergency operations center because it didn't have enough to give them.
Bill Dawson, 60, who rode out the storm with his mother in Port Charlotte, visited Fawcett Memorial in the afternoon to help a neighbor with a pre-existing condition. He looked haggard.
"I wish I were somewhere else," Dawson said. "I'm repenting that I didn't get in a car and drive to the east as far away from Charley as I could."
Times staff writer Alisa Ulferts contributed to this report.
