Hurricane survivors await help

Rescue teams, insurance adjusters and US National Guard troops scattered across Florida today to help victims of Hurricane Charley and deliver water and other supplies to thousands of people left homeless.

Tami Wilson, 45, of Port Charlotte, wiped a tear from her eye after picking up ice and water from National Guardsmen at a “comfort station” in North Point.

She and her husband, Dewaine, had not had a shower or a hot meal since the storm hit.

“The hard part is not being able to bathe and not having food and water unless I go out and look for it. Last night, we almost gave up because it got so hot,” she said.

At least 17 people were killed by the storm in Florida and Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurer, estimated the total value of damage at about €16.4bn. It said insured losses could be as high as €11.3bn.

Earlier, Charley killed four people in Cuba and one in Jamaica.

Nearly one million people remained without power, and officials said it could take weeks to get it fully restored. Some 2,300 people were in emergency shelters, and Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown said 11,000 have already applied for disaster aid.

Brown said it could take several weeks to find all the victims, and officials still did not know today how many people remained unaccounted for. The search was slow in some areas because downed power lines and debris were making the search dangerous.

Officials said early estimates of hundreds of people missing could be inflated by erroneous reports made by worried relatives and friends.

“The fact that we have not found any more dead than we have is nothing short of a miracle,” said Guy Tunnell, chief of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Punta Gorda, a retirement community of about 15,000 people, and Port Charlotte in Charlotte county appeared to be among the hardest-hit areas,.

After slamming into Florida with winds reaching 145 mph and a surge of sea water of 13 feet to 15 feet Charley hit open ocean and made landfall again in South Carolina.

It moved into North Carolina and up the eastern seaboard as a tropical storm before being downgraded to a depression Sunday.

As the storm weakened off the coast of New England, President George Bush surveyed the devastation from helicopter. He consoled storm victims in Punta Gorda, saying “A lot of people’s lives are turned upside down.”

Federal emergency officials said the state has requested catastrophic housing for 10,000 people, and more than 4,000 National Guard troops have been activated.

A 10-year-old boy died today from injuries inflicted by a tornado that demolished his family’s home and hurled him 650 feet in north-western New Zealand.

Doctors at Taranaki Base Hospital turned off Gary Mason’s life support system.

His grandmother, Rosina Dawn Wikohika, 55, died almost immediately when the twister hit the wooden farmhouse yesterday, ripping it from its foundations and tearing it apart.

The boy’s mother, Natasha Mason, 28, and his three-year-old brother Shariff Mason are in hospital in the nearby coastal city of New Plymouth with multiple injuries. Both were reported in serious but stable condition.

The four victims were carried 650 feet by the tornado, said Dennis Robins, the farmer who owns the property. The family was discovered 30 minutes after the tornado hit, lying among the scattered debris.

New Plymouth lies on the west coast of North Island, some 220 miles north of the capital, Wellington.