Pasco County's Mormons and others band together to help storm-ravaged victims in Central Florida.
By ALEX LEARY
Published August 17, 2004
[Times photo: Carrie Pratt]
Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in New Port Richey help clean up the Alligator Park Mobile Home Park in Punta Gorda on Sunday evening. The group of about 30 men and boys, including Tim Peterson, right, and Beau Marshall, left, came down for the day to help clear debris.
NEW PORT RICHEY - Even as the caravan hustled to the wreckage in Punta Gorda on Sunday afternoon, there were those who thought Bishop David Kanar was an alarmist, that it wouldn't be that bad.
Soon, they all were believers.
The trucks carrying 29 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in New Port Richey pulled onto a stretch of Interstate 75 just outside the city and came face to face with the breathless fury of Hurricane Charley.
"Destruction was everywhere," Kanar, who pitched in after Hurricane Andrew in 1992, said Monday after returning home. "Buildings were gone. Trees were gone. Big street lights were snapped like toothpicks."
Finding Alligator Mobile Home & RV Park in Punta Gorda was a challenge; no street signs were left to show the way.
When the Mormons arrived, they encountered even greater destruction. "All around you was twisted metal," Kanar, 43, said. "Mobile homes with two, three, sometimes only one wall standing. Cars with every single window blown out."
The church members, who spent most of Sunday in Punta Gorda and plan to return this weekend, are only some of the relief workers from Pasco County.
A Pasco sheriff's deputy was activated Friday by the Army National Guard; Sunday, five detention deputies were sent to the jail in Charlotte County; and Monday, 12 members of the Community Policing Team headed to a staging area in Osceola County.
By Monday afternoon, Sgt. Mike Schreck and his deputies were on duty in Kissimmee, helping with traffic and staffing comfort areas where residents can get ice, water and showers.
"You have this gnawing feeling you want to get down there and help," said Schreck, who also assisted in the cleanup after Hurricane Andrew. The team, which expects to stay for seven to 10 days, brought its Cannondale mountain bikes to better navigate debris-strewn streets and neighborhoods.
The experience will be profound in ways good and bad, if it is anything like that of Kanar and his church members.
The bad was evident on every street in the mobile home park. Homes were obliterated or left in tangled messes. "Of the 300 homes, I think 10 to 15 had minimal damage," Kanar said. "I didn't see any that didn't have some."
The church workers spent hours clearing the rubble. Some pulled furniture from a severely damaged mobile home and put it in a U-Haul. Kanar found pages of a scrapbook in the street and brought them back to the community center to be claimed.
The center itself was a grim scene. Without electricity, elderly residents were lined up on cots. Some read books or newspapers, but most just sat there with blank expressions on their weary faces. Trash barrels caught rain dripping through the roof.
But in the misery, Kanar and others were brought closer to the human spirit, he said. Some of the best help they could offer Charley's victims was a simple touch of the hand or a hug.
"You realize how fragile human life really is and how ultimately connected we are to each other," Kanar said.
A woman named Sue, who was in charge of the community center, ran over when she saw Kanar and the rest of the group from the church, which included three 12-year-olds and an 82-year-old war veteran named Charlie Curl.
"Everybody, everybody" Sue called out, tears running down her face. "The Mormons are here."
