Is There A Hurricane Toll Cover-up?

By James Donahue

Hurricane Charley hit a densely populated area of Florida, filled with mobile home parks and retirement homes occupied by senior citizens. That it missed Tampa was perhaps a godsend, but still the storm left a 200-mile wide swath of destruction from Punta Gorda northeast through Orlando and Daytona Beach.

A daughter living in Daytona Beach reported winds still clocked at 80 miles per hour when it struck her area. She said it tore up the area and that the power was out for several days. Nobody in the family was hurt.

But something is amiss in all of this.

Charley was rated as a Class Four hurricane when it struck the mainland, with winds reaching 145 miles per hour. While the Weather Channel was set up too far north, expecting the storm to strike the Tampa area, television news crews at Fort Meyer captured the brunt of it. The pictures picked up on news feeds that night revealed a brutal storm that ripped roofs from buildings, toppled trees and all but leveling everything in their path.

An early report said workers were stacking bodies at some of the mobile home parks because the roads were too strewn with debris for ambulances to reach them. Yet when the final tally is told, only 23 people are said to have died in the storm.

We know from recent attempts to purchase property, and the cost of building supplies during the refurbishing of the home we did buy, that building costs are going through the roof. Yet the total cost of damage from that storm is now estimated at from $10 to $15 billion.

We are talking about a 200 mile wide swath through the heart of Florida, including the cities of Orlando (where Disneyworld is located) and on to Daytona Beach. I think $15 billion is a bit conservative.

More troublesome is a report by a so-called eyewitness on the Rumor Mill News website that he counted at least 400 bodies and the number was climbing.

The writer, who identified himself as Michael Edward, said he was among six retired military and police officers who “went out to confirm” body counts in specific areas. He counted 58 dead in Charlotte Harbor, 21 in Fort Myers and the barrier islands, 275 in Punta Gorda, and 36 in Desoto County.

“These figures came from our own eyes, medical personnel, various county sheriff’s departments and eye witnesses or residents from the worst devastated areas,” Edward wrote.

And that was just in a three-county area on the west coast of Florida. He says he believes the toll across the state is much higher, and rising daily.

Why would the national media and our government lie about this kind of information? It reminds me of the non-news we used to get from Russia during the height of the communist dictatorship that ruled that nation.

It is as if someone in high places wants everybody to believe that all is well in Florida and throughout the United States, even as the effects of Global Warming turn the world into a living nightmare.