Here in the Orlando area, recovery from Charley is progressing very slowly. It has been announced today that those people whose power has not yet been restored (over 1 million in central florida alone) will likely be in the dark at LEAST another 7 days. Apparently most of the power for this region is brought up from down south. The power grid down there has been much more severly impacted, so it's like a chain reaction.

On another note, each day since the hurricane, we have gotten very severe thunderstorms in Central Florida. Yesterday saw a flurry of tornado warnings and the same is occuring today. The torrential rains are making an already difficult situation more tenuous. I spent the morning trying to chop up some of the trees lying on my fence, but had to high-tail it indoors because of the weather.

The local people have that "deer-in-the-headlights" look when mention is made of Earl. It's generally agreed that ANY threat of another storm would create a mass panic situation in light of what we just went through. it's hard to decide which would be worse...complacency or hystrical panic..

--Lou