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PENSACOLA - They have sponged off with water from their bird baths, relieved themselves under backyard oaks and lined up for hours for military rations.
Everything is a struggle in this Panhandle city hit broadside by Hurricane Ivan. All the things residents took for granted are in short supply: food, water, electricity, gasoline, air conditioning, health care, phones, roads, bridges.
"I feel like it's 1860," said Jasima Lions, 19, who waited for more than four hours Saturday for water and ice. "It seems like it's the end of the world."
While help poured in overnight to Punta Gorda after Hurricane Charley, it is trickling into Pensacola.
Just getting in and around town is an ordeal, hampering the relief effort.
It took four hours for a caravan of state troopers to travel 150 miles from Tallahassee to Crestview Saturday morning, said Col. Chris Knight, commander of the Florida Highway Patrol. He sent 50 troopers and has 29 more headed in today.
"There have been tremendous logistical challenges," said John Edwards of the Salvation Army, which moves canteens to feed victims and workers wherever disaster strikes. He wanted to stage the response in Tallahassee but was forced to reroute through Alabama.
"We feel much better about it this morning than we did last night," Edwards said Saturday. "We had seven units show up from Texas last night. It was like the cavalry showing up."
The death toll in Florida rose to 18, officials said.
The nation's top emergency official, FEMA director Mike Brown, vowed to keep recovery efforts going in areas already hit by Charley and Frances, even as he directs aid to the Florida Panhandle.
"I think the biggest problem that Florida is going to face is fatigue," Brown said. "When you think about these three hurricanes, the continuing rains and storms, and just the heat, people are going to get worn out."
Brown compared the challenge Florida faces from three hurricanes to the recovery Los Angeles mounted after the 1994 earthquake.
"This will be a long-term recovery project because we have so much infrastructure to rebuild," Brown said.
About 2,000 people remained in 20 shelters in the Panhandle, and eight other shelters housed about 300 people with medical problems.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people spent another day without electricity. While power was finally restored to all homes and businesses that lost power during Hurricane Frances, Gulf Power estimates it will take weeks to reach that goal in the Panhandle.
The extent of the outage is so great, stretching well into Alabama, that officials expect it to take a month before utilities are fully restored and bridges fixed.
It's brought new appreciation for the little things to Clarrice Cannada.
"I promise, I won't take it for granted," Cannada said as she waited for water with her 2-year-old daughter, who cried from hunger, thirst and exhaustion. "I promise!"
Gulf Power, the primary electric company for the Panhandle, lost 6,000 electric poles to Ivan, which shredded 790 miles of transmission line, knocked out 75 substations and damaged the largest generating plant. The company restored power to 80,000 customers - Panama City was 80 percent restored, while Fort Walton Beach had 50 percent on line - but nearly 300,000 were without power.
Getting all that power restored under the best conditions would be difficult. But the task has been made harder because of another infrastructure problem: battered roads.
Utility workers managed to restore a major generating plant and about 150 miles of transmission lines, but "there is still an unbelievable amount of hot, hard and dangerous work ahead," Gulf Power spokesman John Hutchinson said.
"Bringing in the outside contractors has been difficult because of the traffic," Hutchinson said. "We urge all residents to stay off the roads unless absolutely necessary so our crews can get to their work quickly."
Without electricity, gas stations can't pump gas unless they have generators, and those were selling for cash only, since credit card lines didn't work.
"We have the money, there's just nothing to buy," said a tearful Amanda Vega, 20. "I saw what happened in the other cities when Charley and Frances hit. I can't believe we're living it."
At a crumbling gas station on U.S. 29, Jim Baird sold out of his supply of 15 generators and 16 chain saws in two hours.
The Vero Beach man charged $200 for the 16-inch chain saws and $725 for the generators - cash only.
He ran out of generators first.
"I would've paid you $1,000 for it," said Mary Jackson, a 57-year-old nurse. "We need one. It's been rough."
The lack of fuel, combined with impassable roads and washed-out bridges, forced FEMA to use giant C-130 cargo planes to fly supplies into the area.
Brown said FEMA will not divert workers from other damaged areas of Florida. "We have all those same people working all those same disasters," he said. "We're not taking anything away from the peninsula to serve up in the Panhandle."
Workers made some progress Saturday.
About half of Escambia County's water wells were up and running. Repairs had begun to the county's sewer system, though residents were still asked to flush conservatively.
Repairs also have begun to some of the major bridges and roads damaged during the storm, and the state awarded a $26.5-million contract to fix the twin bridges connecting Escambia and Santa Rosa counties.
The National Guard, which has more than 4,800 troops deployed throughout the state, helped transport 48 nurses into Pensacola to take care of patients in the only building that escaped damage at Pensacola Junior College.
"Unfortunately we're getting quite good at this," said Dr. John Agwunobi, secretary of the Florida Department of Health.
The Salvation Army asked truckers in the Tampa Bay area for help transporting food, water, ice, prepared meals and personal care items from Tampa to the Panhandle.
"We've used every resource we have," said Capt. John David Falin Jr., a Salvation Army spokesman. "We're all overwhelmed."'
Times staff writer Jamie Thompson contributed to this report, which includes material from the Associated Press.