Today’s edition of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune has a very interesting article on how Charlotte County has recovered from Hurricane Charley, which made landfall in the Punta Gorda area as a small but very powerful category 4 hurricane five years ago today, on August 13, 2004.
There are several manufactured housing communities mentioned in the story and, with one tropical depression and a very strong tropical wave churning off the coast of Africa, I thought this would be a good time to remind ROC residents that a slower than usual start to our annual hurricane season should not give rise to a false sense of security. The traditional peak of the season is still one month away and as we all know, hurricanes that occur in “slow” seasons (such as Hurricane Andrew, which devastated portions of southeast Florida in late August of 1992) can be just as destructive as those that occur in “active” seasons.
As always, ROC managers and board members should be aware of the need to prepare for an unwelcome visit from one of these tropical systems.