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Most people who choose to live in mobile homes know they have made a pact with Mother Nature: When she comes to visit, they head out the door.
"As soon as I hear, I'm out," said Ernie Langsford, 78, and a 24-year resident of Causeway Village in South Pasadena in Pinellas County.
David Powell, 65, agreed.
"Living in a mobile home is just nuts," said the six-year resident of the Wilder's park in south St. Petersburg. "It's an easy way to live, but hurricane proof? No. You might as well call 'em "disposable homes.' "
But there are thousands who choose to stay.
All the way up the coast, from Pinellas County to Citrus County, mobile home residents decided to ignore the threat of Hurricane Charley and stay home. In Pasco County, sheriff's deputies said only about one in four residents in mandatory evacuation zones heeded the call to leave.
In Punta Gorda, just 100 miles south of Tampa Bay, the decision to ride it out cost some mobile home residents their lives.
Officials said people who defy evacuation orders make themselves targets for storms.
"Every live press briefing, we made a point to tell those people to get out," Pinellas County Administrator Steve Spratt said Saturday. "Yet too many people made a choice to stay in their mobile homes. That is deadly."
Pinellas officials did not know how many mobile home residents stayed put.
"We were advising people to leave, but were not arresting people who didn't leave," said Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Marianne Pasha. "I think in a couple of places, people were intoxicated and uncooperative."
Raymond James said he stayed in his home in High Point mobile home village in Largo because he wanted to protect it from looters. James, 52, and a couple of friends passed the time drinking.
"The fire department told me to put a name tag on, so they could identify me floating in the water," James said. "Why should I leave? If it hits, it hits."
At Lecanto Hills Mobile Home & RV Park in Citrus County, only three or four of the park's 50 residents evacuated.
Those who stayed did so not out of defiance but ignorance. Most residents of the park did not know Citrus had issued an evacuation notice for all mobile home residents, said park representative Rosemarie Olmstead.
Some Hernando County mobile home residents were prepared to evacuate, but changed their minds after watching the storm turn east several hours before its scheduled arrival.
"Nothing happened, it was just beautiful in here," said Nick Nickerson, 83, a Brooksville mobile home resident.
Most of his neighbors evacuated inland and found that instead of evading the hurricane, they had driven directly into its path.
Pasco sheriff's spokesman Kevin Doll said that the stay-at-homes might feel vindicated because Charley hit elsewhere, but he suggested they take note of the destruction in Punta Gorda.
"We did dodge another bullet," Doll said, "but that's not to say it won't happen to us the next time."
Staff writers Michael Sandler, Steve Thompson, Shannon Tan, Amy Wimmer Schwarb, Jorge Sanchez and Dan DeWitt contributed to this report.