TAMPA - After twice evacuating a small number of abused and neglected children from one coast to the other, a Florida human services agency is preparing once again to move them to Fort Lauderdale.
When Hurricane Charley approached last month, staff members of Lutheran Services Florida drove 12 children from shelters in Fort Myers and Port Charlotte to its shelter in Fort Lauderdale, said Peter Ledecky, vice president of statewide programs and services.
When Hurricane Frances threatened the east coast three weeks later, 12 Fort Lauderdale children were brought to Fort Myers. Now, with Hurricane Ivan forecasted to plow into the state's west coast, the Fort Myers children will be brought again to Fort Lauderdale.
"The children are very much apprehensive and fearful, there's no question about it," Ledecky said.
The last few days, officials considered moving the children on both coasts up to the agency's shelter in Pensacola.
"But now even that region could be under the eye of the hurricane," he said.
Lutheran Services Florida is a nonprofit human services agency that has oversight of children and teenagers referred by the Department of Juvenile Justice and the Department of Children and Families. The children, ranging in age from 10 to 17, are put in temporary shelters awaiting either placement in foster homes or return to their families.
Charley destroyed the Port Charlotte shelter, so all west coast children have been staying at the Fort Myers facility, which has 20 beds, Ledecky said.
During Frances, 12 children were brought from Fort Lauderdale to the Fort Myers shelter. The children returned after live electric wires were cleared from the roof and the yard, he said.
The Lutheran Services Florida staff tried to make an adventure of the previous journeys to lessen the children's stress, he said. They went ice skating and played games.
Now the Fort Lauderdale shelter will likely play host again, Ledecky said. If the storm stays on its Friday track, eight children and six staff members will leave the Fort Myers shelter and head east.
Of those children, three were involved in the last evacuation. The other five are new clients, while the nine children who also made the last trip were temporarily placed with their families for Ivan.
The children and the staff needed counseling through Charley, Ledecky said. Six employees from Port Charlotte lost everything, he said, returning to find their homes destroyed.
"All of the children we have, all of these teenagers, have deep emotional scars," he said. They need more than safe shelter and water, he said. "We need to have a strong clinical overlay."
The lessons taught to the children in counseling are the same ones Florida's residents are learning these days: "The children have the opportunities to speak among themselves and rationalize and understand that living in this tropical environment, this is something they need to get used to."
Projected path