Last Saturday, a friend and I went down to Punta Gorda. The general objective was to link up with Methodists from Naples and then to lend a hand with whatever clean-up or repair work we could find. The Naples people arrived late and left early. Don and I spent several hours cleaning up tree limbs and debris around the house of an out-of-town minister. Later, we went out to the Cleveland Avenue Methodist Church and helped them pick up debris from a shattered shed and hundreds of pieces of broken asphalt shingles that blew from their roof.
Words can hardly describe the conditions we saw. I didn't want to be the kind of rubber-necking fool who stops on the highway to take pictures and so I missed several dramatic photos, but I did get a few at the end of the day (see below).
They had no power in downtown Punta Gorda. I got used to Florida's hellish heat and humidity as a kid but at least we had lights, refrigerators, fans, and TV sets that worked. They don't, and it has been more than a week. Some of these folks have tarps for roofs and plywood for windows. If they were really lucky, like the minister whose house we tidied up, they had falling trees that missed the power lines and their roofs. If they weren't lucky. . .life for them is going to be miserable for months to come.
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