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PUNTA GORDA - Don Paterson felt his mobile home start to tip over. He grabbed hold of the kitchen sink and clung to it for dear life. The refrigerator slammed into him.
"I knew to get out," he said later, his only injury a bruised nose, "but the storm was quicker than I was."
Like many people in Charlotte County, Paterson had thought for much of Friday that Hurricane Charley was headed for Tampa Bay. By the time he learned it was pointed at Charlotte, it was too late to evacuate.
While forecasters had issued warnings for residents all along the west coast, many in Charlotte said they were caught off guard.
"We're kind of surprised that people were caught by surprise," said Robbie Berg of the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
Residents on barrier islands and in mobile homes got the order to evacuate at noon Thursday, 28 hours before Charley's winds and rain bands were first felt in Charlotte County, said Wayne Sallade, the county emergency management director.
"For whatever reason, or maybe because they couldn't, these people did not evacuate," he said. "People in many cases just don't believe it can happen here. It's denial."
Gov. Jeb Bush said he was satisfied that mobile home park residents, particularly battered during the storm, had adequate notice.
"Charlotte had a mandatory evacuation the day before - at the same time it was given for Lee, Pinellas and Hillsborough," Bush said. "Plus, there were thousands of admonitions and 24-hour coverage from the local news media."
As Charley quickly grew from a Category 2 to a Category 4 hurricane on Friday, much of the media focus was on Tampa Bay, which appeared to be the storm's target. When Charley took a sharp turn to the right, many residents in and around Punta Gorda were caught unprepared.
"We were not saying Tampa," said Berg in the National Hurricane Center. "We were saying the west coast of Florida."
The media's fixation with "Tampa, Tampa, Tampa" may have given some residents the wrong idea, he said, but everyone had "ample warning."
It will take days to get a final death toll, but two or three of Charlotte County's confirmed fatalities were people who refused to evacuate their mobile homes, Sallade said.
Avis Thattell and her husband, Bob, didn't heed the call to evacuate on Thursday. They regretted their decision.
"I really wanted to run, but it switched so quickly," Avis Thattell said Saturday. "It was too late to leave."
She huddled in a bathtub with her two poodles, listening to the eerie whistling of the 145 mph wind. She lost track of her husband. He eventually reappeared, unscathed from a trip outside to watch the storm.
Even the local newspaper was taken by surprise.
Early Friday, staffers at the Charlotte Sun in Port Charlotte thought the storm was headed for Tampa Bay.
"We were running that day like there was going to be no weather," said publisher David Dunn-Rankin.
About 20 staffers had to ride out the hurricane in the newspaper's building, about a half-mile from Charlotte Harbor.
Ceiling tiles bounced, he said, and the building shook. "It was like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride."
Staff writer Lucy Morgan contributed to this report, which also contains information from the Associated Press.