Hi all and greetings from Tampa, Florida (and Fort Myers).
The consensus seems to be "very little damage considering there was a Cat 3 hurricane out there." Fort Myers Beach had some minor storm surge & rain flooding, but not much. The north part of the island lost power around 6am local time, while the southern part of the island had power until 9am. Pretty impressive in my book. As of 5pm local time, both are still without power. Haven't heard any any real structural damage. The Lani Kai lost part of the rooftop bar, like they always do (next time, do the damn additions to code!). Trees down all over the place, but the tree trimming crews are already working & clearing roads. All that I got in my place was a bit of wind-driven rain. Generator's cranking away and I have ~2 weeks' worth of fuel there, so life's good on the beach. The water's drinkable, but for some reason, my guests are preferring other types of liquid refreshment stockpiled before the storm.
Reports from Ft. Myers in general are similar type damage, with trees down, some superficial damage to buildings, etc. All in all, not bad. Power is out to most of the area and FP&L isn't saying when it might be back. My best guess would be that at least half the area will be back on by Wednesday, with the majority by Friday, but I've not looked over the whole grid yet. Germain Arena, the area's largest shelter, had ~5,000 people in it at the height of the storm. People are slowly trickling out, not sure how many will return back for the night, but undoubtedly some of them will return. Cell towers seem to be intact, although I've noticed in the past hour or so, some of them aren't responding, so I'm assuming they've lost power & have drained their batteries. (anyone got a boatload of AA batteries?
) Landlines seem to be in good shape. It seems many people in FL still haven't learned to put a line-powered phone somewhere in the house, so quite a few people have phone service, but without power, their cordless phones don't work.
I personally got stuck in Tampa for this one, but entirely unhappy about it. I never lost power nor communications with Fort Myers/Germain arena (Kudos Vonage!). It actually made for a great communcation center, being close enough to the area to respond, but not stuck in the middle of the mess. Had some nice stormage here, had one broad-leafed northern-type tree go over, some wind-driven rain through the window glazing, but otherwise the storm was a non-issue up here. It was quite fun to watch 'though.