Boca Grande righting trees, repairing historic locales


By DENES HUSTY III, dhusty@news-press.com
Published by news-press.com on August 18, 2004


Emergency crews and citizens alike are pitching in to clean up the quaint community of Boca Grande, where historic landmarks and new condominiums were blasted by Hurricane Charley.

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The Gasparilla Inn, where both former and current presidents Bush have stayed, sustained extensive damage to the main building and most cottages, said general manager Andy Nagle.

The 150-room inn, which was closed for the summer, will reopen on schedule in mid-December, Nagle vowed.

A large Cuban laurel tree, which provided a canopy under which many couples have been married over the past 100 years or so, was uprooted by the hurricane’s fierce winds.

Nagle said crews are standing the tree back up, hoping it will survive.

All over the island there is a can-do attitude.

“We have the intrepid spirit of the Florida pioneer. We got booted in the butt; now we’re picking ourselves up,” said Kathleen Rohrer, executive director of the Barrier Island Park Society, which manages the 114-year-old Boca Grande Lighthouse.

Like Boca Grande itself, the lighthouse “is damaged, but certainly not devastated,” Rohrer said.

Located on the 7-mile Gasparilla Island between the Gulf of Mexico and Charlotte Harbor, Boca Grande has been the vacation spot of America’s rich and famous.

Officials estimate that Hurricane Charley packed winds of up to 145 mph as it passed swiftly by the community of 1,000 year-round residents to wreak more extensive damage on Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte.

An official damage estimate has not been released, but residents believe it could run into the tens of millions.

“We had a lot of wind. Two or three homes were destroyed” and trees, some at least 100 years old, were uprooted and branches and other debris are everywhere, said Lee County sheriff’s Lt. Morgan Bowder.

As soon as the storm passed, about 100 workers around the resort island swung into action, Bowder said.

Within 15 hours, they had cleared the streets enough to make them passable, and residents are pitching in to help, he said.

About 90 percent of the homes and businesses on the island now have electricity and water, Bowder said. He said residents are still under a boil water notice.

It may take a month or so before the entire island is cleaned up, said Danny McKee, a Lee County supervisor overseeing the work.

Still, considering what people in Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte are going through, “we’re unbelievably lucky here in Boca Grande,” Bowder said.

Many of the island’s historic places were damaged, though.

For instance, the catwalk at the top of the Boca Grande Lighthouse was torn off, as were hurricane shutters. Windows were shattered, as was one exhibit case inside the structure that is now a museum, Rohrer said.

Two original 114-year-old cedar wood cisterns were destroyed, she said.

But the assistant watch keeper’s house built in 1890 survived unscathed, and her group plans to reopen the museum to the public at 10 a.m. Saturday, Rohrer said.

Sherren Baughman, a watercolor artist living on Banyan Street, said she wonders whether the giant trees for which the street is named will survive.

The hurricane’s winds managed to uproot one giant tree and tore off hundreds of branches from others, making the street impassable for awhile.

Yet not one touched her house, built in the 1930s, Baughman said.

The hurricane also felled two majestic 50-to-60-year-old royal palm trees in front of Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church, which lost only a few shingles, said the Rev. Jerome A. Carosella, who rode out the storm there with his cat, Delilah.

Newer buildings also were damaged.

The roof to the Harborside Condominium, for instance, had extensive roof and water damage, said Hubert Longest of Indiana, who owns a unit there and arrived Tuesday to survey the damage.

“If you decide to live on the ocean, you put yourself in harm’s way,” he said philosophically.

For more information on the lighthouse check out this link - it is quite beautiful! http://www.barrierislandparkssociety.org/aboutthelighthouse.html