PLANT CITY - Terrie Bird moved to Florida from New Jersey four months ago.
She soon found herself hating the heat, the spiders, the snakes. And now, hurricanes.
"That's it," Bird said. "I'm through with Florida. I changed my mind."
The 47-year-old vowed to return to New Jersey.
But with pounding rains and howling winds standing in her way, she wasn't going anywhere but to an emergency shelter.
Bird, who lives in a mobile home with friends in Polk County's Willow Oak community, sought refuge from Hurricane Frances on Saturday at Marshall Middle School in Plant City.
She tried to drift off on her makeshift bed among 200 strangers: Adults who stayed awake all night aching for their beds and recliners back home; children who refused to snooze because of all the excitement.
Her friend, 61-year-old Fran Williamson, groaned.
"I don't do children very well," Williamson said. "I can only take so many for so long."
Williamson knew she had no choice but to adapt - she didn't flee when Hurricane Charley passed through a few weeks ago and felt the wind lifting her mobile home from its foundation.
"I told my dog, "We're gonna play Dorothy,"' she recalled saying. "We could hear the trees cracking."
With mandatory evacuation orders in effect for mobile home residents in Polk and Hillsborough counties, people flooded the county's easternmost shelters, filling some to capacity. In all, more than 5,000 showed up to the county's 11 shelters.
Marshall, which opened as a shelter Friday, shut down Saturday morning because of inactivity, only to be reopened at 8 p.m. Saturday when demand for space soared.
Across the county, school administrators, janitors and cafeteria workers prepared to serve those in their schools' makeshift shelters.
At the Red Cross registration table inside Marshall's band room, people filled out paperwork near a row of lockers used to store musical instruments.
They carried jugs of water, cans of soda and plastic garbage bags filled with blankets and pillows that appeared to have been grabbed straight off their beds at home.
Some pillow cases were embroidered; others had been crocheted with colorful yarn or trimmed with delicate lace.
Refugees from the storm were divided between two adjoining rooms - childless couples in one, large broods in the other.
A majority of the evacuees at Marshall were migrant families - one family consisted of 11 members.
Young children carried their infant siblings, elementary school-age kids translated for their parents.
Inside Ms. Rook's chorus room, it became one big party for the kids. Blankets and pillows covered the carpeted floors. A piano sat in a corner. Musical notes decorated the walls. Everywhere, parents lounged, laughing as their kids made friends.
Officials filled a huge drum with ice, which parents used to chill gallons of whole milk and containers of juice.
"The kids think it's fun," said Alesia Shadley, who fled her Plant city trailer with her four children and boyfriend. "It's like one big slumber party."
The room sounded like a carnival, with kids squealing, crying and laughing. They chased each other around the room and romped on blankets, and newborns napped in car seats.
The air smelled of a mixture of diapers and sweat.
Inside the band room, where senior citizens and those with older children were assigned, David Boyd, a friend of Bird's, filled a queen-size air bed using a battery-operated pump.
The mattress grew and grew until it reached the height of a real bed on a box spring.
Then, Bird, the homesick New Jersey woman, floated a cotton bed sheet over the top. She topped it with a velvet blanket.
All around them, people sitting on comforters on the floor watched with envy.
"Now that is the way to do it," chuckled Red Cross volunteer Seldon Carsey, 72.
For hours, the two adjoining rooms buzzed. Televisions in each classroom were set to local news stations. The power flickered off and on several times.
At 11 p.m., 8-month-old Erick De La Rosa was still crawling around blankets and over pillows, despite his mother's attempts to feed him a bottle and rock him.
"There's just too much going on," said his exasperated mother, Erika De La Rosa, 25, of Plant City.
His 10-year-old aunt, Eulalia Ruiz, stuck a pacifier in his mouth, but he spit it out and squirmed out of her arms to explore some more.
The older kids went in and out of the building, coming back soaked and smiling.
The school janitor asked Plant City police Officer Arden Haggerty: "Aren't they supposed to be sleeping?"
"I don't know," Haggerty said. "I'm supposed to make sure they don't kill themselves."
About midnight, when it appeared the children would never tire, officials dimmed the lights.
"Good night!" some yelled.
Those who were unable to sleep grabbed chairs and sat outside, feeling the wind gusts against their faces, their chatter thumping to the beat of the rain.
Next to the band room, the nurses' station contained the only two restrooms for the 222 evacuees.
A pot of strong, freshly brewed coffee and a collection of foam cups were set up near containers of cotton balls, antiseptic towelettes and gauze pads.
At 2 a.m., Robert Levensky of Plant City poured himself a cup of coffee. He had lost track of how many cups he had consumed.
"Somewhere in the gallons," he said.
"It's hard to sleep in there" said Levensky, a 46-year-old factory worker. "There's too much chatter; it's cold. I miss my bed."
At 3:30 a.m., 71-year-old Roger Mincey of Springhead poured himself his fourth cup of coffee.
"I don't remember the last time I stayed up all night," Mincey said.
A steady stream of coffee drinkers flowed in and out through the early morning. Some weighed themselves on a scale in the nurses' office.
Anything to pass the time.
Jessie Garcia, 45, and his wife, Juana Aguilar, 36, of Plant City camped out underneath a fire extinguisher and played a Mexican card game called conquin. "We are happy to be here because the hurricane looks scary," Garcia said. "We just hope when we return, our home will still be there."
