BABSON PARK - During the worst of Hurricane Charley, Polk County resident David Nelson huddled with his family in a hallway closet. Their two-story home rocked as 120 mph winds blasted off Crooked Lake. Nelson thought they might not make it.
On Sunday, as Polk County again found itself in the cross hairs of a destructive hurricane, Nelson stood outside and watched the pounding rain.
"This is easy," he said, the wind flapping at the tail of his untucked Florida Gators T-shirt.
While Frances knocked out power, toppled trees and turned Crooked Lake into an angry froth, Nelson and other hurricane-weary Polk residents say the storm's daylong assault didn't measure up to Charley's wrath.
"Charley was a lot tougher," said Nelson, who had moved his wife and children to South Carolina as Frances moseyed across the Bahamas. "Charley, we're not going to forget."
Suzy Turner agreed.
"Today, it's kind of fun," Turner said.
Three weeks ago, she rode out Charley with 40 other people at a makeshift shelter in the First Baptist Church of Alturas, a small community among the orange groves in south central Polk.
She returned to the church over the weekend with her two children, just to be safe. The adults passed the time by watching TV and talking about Charley. The children played, indifferent to the hurricane right outside the door.
"With Charley," she said, "it was frightening, really, really frightening."
But Frances was not without problems.
While Charley ripped off roofs, Frances blew off tarps covering many of those roofs, then rained inside.
Several Polk County neighborhoods are a patchwork of blue-tarped roofs, a legacy of Charley. By Sunday, many residents had left, either out of fright or because Charley made their homes uninhabitable.
Frances added an extra insult.
The rain poured late Sunday afternoon at the Kissimmee home of Christie Hubbard, leaving 2 inches of water in what used to be the living room.
"We haven't even gotten things fixed from Charley," Hubbard said Sunday as she watched her roof leak like a sieve. "And here we go again."
She and her husband, Mark, a 43-year-old Osceola County firefighter, had just painted. They bought a new television and installed surround sound. Then they tacked a tarp on the bare roof.
It was no match for Frances.
Christie Hubbard, 46, covered the floor with buckets, a cooler, even a 10-gallon fish tank on Sunday. The water filled them all, then it kept coming.
On Sunday afternoon, Mark Hubbard recruited co-workers to refasten the tarp, hoping for any relief.
"It's a horrible feeling," Mark Hubbard said, looking at his saturated home. "You get by. We have to. The sun comes up tomorrow."
Not far away, the Perez family waded toward dinner time. Every room in their 1,700-square-foot house on Patrick Street was covered in nearly an inch of water. Several ceilings had caved in from the dampness, spilling insulation all over the floor.
Same story: Charley had opened up the roof; Frances had dumped water.
They tried in vain to soak up the water with towels and newspapers.
"What can I do?" said Gloria Perez, 42, as she fried cod for her husband and son. "I can't just start crying. You've got to have patience. We're not the only ones."
Her 12-year-old son, Moses Rivera, stood in the pond of his kitchen, shaking his head.
"I hope Ivan doesn't come," he said, referring to another hurricane now in the Atlantic Ocean. "Two is enough."
