Florida residents were in the middle of cleaning up from Charley when Hurricane Frances decided to take a shot at Florida to see if it could make a bigger mess. And if that is not bad enough, category four Hurricane Ivan appears to be taking the same path, and could also hit Florida’s coast as early as next week.



According to officials dealing with the aftermath of two category four hurricanes hitting Florida in less than a month the cost is astronomical, Florida Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher estimates billions, and the known loss of lives has reached 27.



President George Bush visited Florida on Wednesday and has asked Congress to approve two billion dollars for “urgent needs.”



Lafayette County didn’t feel the full-impact of either Charley or Frances, hopefully Ivan will treat us the same.



County officials teamed up with local Red Cross and volunteers to prepare for the expected influx of South Florida evacuees as well as local residents that were under voluntary evacuation. Donnie Land, County Emergency Manager, confirmed a total of 427 people that were housed between the designated shelter at Lafayette High School and three host shelters, OakRidge, Alton Church of God and Cornerstone Baptist Church.



Lafayette County Commissioners declared a state of emergency on Friday and the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) was manned throughout the weekend tracking Frances in order to make information available to residents about evacuation and weather conditions in the county.



Buddy Williams, local fuel distributor was at his station on SR 27 throughout the weekend making fuel available to motorists. Williams said he had prepared earlier in the event of a fuel shortage due to the higher demand of fuel in south Florida.



Croft’s Thriftway had also stocked its shelves to have food available for residents countywide.



With students out of school for Labor Day, the schools remained closed on Wednesday.



Power companies worked diligently to restore power in the county for residents and businesses who lost power by early evening on Sunday. Although some were back on by Monday afternoon, there are still areas where people have not had electrical power since Sunday. It has been an on again, off again electrical scenario that has played out well into the week, even causing Lafayette County Courthouse and the county’s only grocery store to close by mid-morning on Tuesday when the power continued to fade.



Local restaurants improvised on their menus to provide cold sandwiches to folks that called in hungry and one resilient person used the rain to shower in and commented, “it wasn’t such a bad deal until the rain slowed down and left me fully-soaped up.” According to her , the rain did return long enough to wash off the soap.



Thankfully, there have been no reports of loss of life or injuries in Lafayette County during the two-day assault by Frances.



On Tuesday, Sept. 7, Mayo Correctional Institution work crews were out and about clearing the county of tree limbs that covered every square inch of ground, as were local good neighbors like the employees at Mayo Fertilizer who were busy around their immediate area clearing branches and debris.



Before Frances struck the panhandle she had dumped over 13 inches of rain on east central Florida and blew away roof tops, vehicles and uprooted numerous trees. One observer said, “it looks like a war zone.”



An estimated six million have been without power in Florida and over 40,000 in Georgia. About 2.8 million residents were asked to evacuate across the state as Frances moved toward Florida with winds of 115 mph, having slowed down from the earlier speed of 150 mph. Forty counties initiated either a mandatory or voluntary evacuations.



Now, according to Land, it’s time to replenish those emergency supplies, water, canned food, etc. in preparation for Ivan.



With two major hurricanes, Charley and Frances, having knocked on our back door in less than a month and with a third one on the way residents are praying Ivan will play out in a similar fashion, leaving us touched but not too badly.



Local emergency numbers to remember are:

Emergency Management – 294-1950.

Sheriff’s Office – 294-1222.

County Jail – 294-1301.

Town Hall – 294-1551.

Red Cross – 294-3845.

FEMA 1-800-621-3362