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POWER RESTORED

About 102,000 customers are without power, state officials said. About half of Charlotte County has had power restored, but it's not expected to be restored countywide until Aug. 29.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said 77,000 families in Florida have registered for disaster relief; $13-million has been paid out in the areas affected by Charley.

The Army Corps of Engineers plans to start helping residents cover damaged roofs in the stricken area with blue tarps, officials told Gov. Jeb Bush on Saturday.

"By the middle of next week you should see a blue wave from your helicopter," Col. Bob Carpenter said. "My mission is to do 10,000. If they let us get on the roof, we're on it and we're going to keep going until we run out of roofs."

"You guys are going to be heroes down there," Bush said. The governor helped load cases of baby formula and soup into a National Guard truck as a show of support for the troops and their efforts to supply victims of Hurricane Charley with basic necessities.

More than 1,300 semitrailer loads of food, water, ice, shampoo, diapers and other supplies have been shipped out of a staging area set up near the Lakeland Municipal Airport.

World-renowned artist Robert Rauschenberg, three assistants and his art weathered Hurricane Charley in his storm-hardened home on the Gulf Coast barrier island of Captiva.

"It was a nightmare experience," Rauschenberg said through personal secretary Bradley Jeffreys. The 78-year-old artist is in a wheelchair and partly paralyzed by two strokes.

He said Charley's 145-mph winds trimmed back his overgrown 35-acre estate: "The last jungle on Captiva, which I own, is on its knees."

Rauschenberg's concrete home-studio, built on 35-foot pilings, sprung leaks.

"It felt like it was sprinkling" inside, said Pam Schmidt, a staff member who stayed in the compound where Rauschenberg has lived for 30 years.

Aside from some roof damage, the 17,000-square-foot structure is fundamentally sound, Jeffreys said. Artwork lining the 120-foot-long concrete-floored studio was not moved and not damaged by the storm.

A helicopter flew in the next morning to evacuate Rauschenberg, and the artist initially resisted leaving. He was flown to Fort Myers for a temporary stay during storm cleanup.

In North Florida, long caravans of utility trucks from the Oklahoma Public Service Commission, Mississippi Power and Quanta Services in Missouri were heading home Saturday on Interstates 75 and 10.

Signs on the backs of the trucks read: "So Long Charley," "Goodbye Charley" and "Charley's Angels."

The trucks were among hundreds that arrived in Florida a week ago to help repair power lines downed in Florida communities stretching from Sanibel Island to Daytona Beach.

Florida Sen. Bill Nelson said he would pursue legislation to pool research on ways to make buildings more resistant to hurricane winds.

Nelson said several federal agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, are conducting research to improve building construction for hurricanes.

A measure pending in the Senate Commerce Committee would combine research money to coordinate the agencies' work. It also would help educate the construction industry and local government building inspectors on ways to make buildings more secure in hurricanes.

Information from Times staff writer Lucy Morgan and the Associated Press was used in this report.