Charley Leaves at Least 13 Dead

David J. Migneault sits in what remains of his law office in the Professional Building in Punta Gorda. The hurricane ripped off an outside wall of the building. (Julie Fletcher -- Orlando Sentinel Via AP)

The casualty tally is expected to rise as rescuers pick their way through the ruins of trailer homes and other buildings flattened by the hurricane. Charlotte County officials confirmed four deaths, and there were nine confirmed storm-related deaths elsewhere in the state, according to the Associated Press.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency estimated that 50,000 people were in shelters and that 80 percent of the buildings in Charlotte County were damaged. Florida sought emergency housing assistance for 10,000 families. And the American Red Cross set up 250 disaster-relief shelters in the state.

Charley brought power outages and traffic jams throughout southern Florida, as hundreds of thousands of motorists clogged the highways to escape the storm and then to return to their homes. Because of the initial predictions about the hurricane's course, some people found themselves driving into more exposed areas.

Willis Williams, 56, evacuated his home in Largo, west of Tampa, on Friday morning, fleeing to the Orlando area, where it took him many hours to find a hotel room. On Saturday, he was stranded in an 80-mile traffic jam on Interstate 4 while trying to return home. "I left Largo because they said the storm was headed there, but it actually hit the [Orlando] area much harder," he said, as he waited in a long line for gas outside Walt Disney World, which reopened Saturday after closing briefly because of the hurricane.

On state Highway 17, south of Orlando, a trail of storm damage led the way to Charlotte County. "It was like a bomb went off," said William McPherson, a volunteer firefighter in Fort Meade. "Every street has tree limbs down, power lines down."

Further south, in Wauchula, which is largely populated by migrant farm workers, many trailer homes had been crushed by fallen trees, or had been flipped on their sides by tornadoes spawned by the hurricane. Telephone poles were strewn across roads, snapped into several pieces like toothpicks. Traffic lights had been ripped from poles, and several streets were impassable because of flooding.

"I've lived in the Caribbean for 30 years, and I have never seen a hurricane this bad," said Phil Anderson, who helped several Haitian families evacuate their homes. "It was so fast, but so intense."

The Charlotte Regional Medical Center in Punta Gorda evacuated its remaining 23 most seriously ill patients on Saturday afternoon after it lost power and phone service, and after its windows were blown out. In the Sheriff's Department station nearby, the roof had caved in. Residents said that the hurricane hit the area at about 3:45 p.m. Friday and that the worst of the storm lasted for about an hour.

"I thought I was going to die," said Mindy Lyles, 39, a bartender who decided to ride out the storm in her trailer home. "The ceiling was jumping. It took the side off, like a can opener."

Punta Gorda residents said most people appeared to have stayed in the town, not heeding the mandatory evacuation order issued by emergency authorities. The tug of home was so strong that many evacuees returned Saturday from other parts of the state.

"My home is here, my things are here, my friends are here, my life is here," said Sandra Rickets, who brought her three dogs to the emergency operations center, as she searched for a place to stay after her trailer home was destroyed. An officer at the door just shook his head. "We have no shelters, ma'am. They aren't going to open until we have power, and we don't know when that's going to happen."

Dobbs reported from Washington. Staff writers Ceci Connolly in Wauchula, Fla., and David Snyder in Arcadia, Fla. contributed to this report.