For Hurricane Victims, 'Normal' Is a Mantra and a Wish

The U.S. flag flies over the post office in downtown Punta Gorda again. Little mail trucks gingerly navigate the tree-littered roads, and residents whose mailboxes were destroyed have been leaving handmade containers with signs that say "Mail here, please."

The soundtrack of the region is pure generator and chain saw. Both were on sale, pitched from the backs of pickup trucks and under shade trees, on the roads leading into the storm's nexus in Punta Gorda.

The Florida attorney general's office has filed charges against two hotels accused of inflating prices. It is preparing several other cases culled from thousands of complaints, including disturbing reports of huge price increases for water and ice.

"They've been victimized once; it's unbelievable to think that someone would think to victimize them again with price gouging," Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist said.

The area's large Spanish-speaking population is also increasingly a focus of emergency workers because of rumors that undocumented aliens seeking help would be deported.

"We don't care if they are documented or undocumented. We can get them help," said Brown, who appeared Thursday on the Spanish-language networks Telemundo and Univision.

Brown's agency has accepted 72,000 requests for financial housing assistance and has approved 20,000, distributing $10.5 million.

For those still waiting, places such as L.A. Ainger Middle School in Rotonda West, the closest shelter to Punta Gorda, are home. Gloria Henry, 58, who retired to Port Charlotte four years ago after decades of making Hershey's chocolate bars, did cross-stitch and listened to her neighbor, Bertha Chachere, 38, vent about being denied housing aid by FEMA.

"My husband says, 'We're going back to Pennsylvania. I'll leave you down here and go myself if I have to,' " Henry said.

A few steps away from the air mattress that Henry and her husband, Mike, have shared for five nights, Denise Fleury escaped into a romance novel.

Its title was "Feather in the Wind."

Connolly reported from Washington. Staff writer David Snyder in Fort Myers and special correspondent Catharine Skipp in Miami contributed to this report.