...existing projects and clients and determine how to get projects back on schedule," he says. One, the $55-million Daytona International Speedway, was "torn up." A lake drained to build parking filled up again, and a tunnel under the track flooded, he says.

In Punta Gorda, every school suffered extensive damage–except for the 900-student Sallie Jones Elementary School, a two-story, 98,000-sq-ft, tilt-up concrete structure with metal roof, steel floor and roof framing. Reynolds, Smith and Hills, Inc., South Jacksonville, Fla., designed it in 2001 to meet the standard of 120 mph wind load. An additional "importance factor" of 1.15 resulted in a structural design load of 138 mph for wind.

Contractor Owen-Ames-Kimball Co., Ft. Meyers, Fla., completed the school in 2003. It has a two-story central core with single-story wings running alongside, says Reynolds architect Charlie Gutekunst. "That profile is less of a hard edge for the winds to deal with," he notes. Except for some soffit damage on the 4-ft overhangs, "nothing really happened to the building."

The school stands in stark contrast to what’s around it, Gutekunst adds. The 1938 high school behind it lost its third floor, he says. “Sallie Jones Elementry is intact and will be used as an emergency center,” adds Steve Shimp, president of Owen-Ames-Kimball. “It’s about the only usable building on the south side of the Charlotte Harbor at this point.”

Progress Energy Florida, St. Petersburg, suffered severe damage to 700 miles of transmission lines between 69 and 230 kV, and 62 substations were knocked out of service. "This is not going to be just power restoration; it’s major reconstruction," said Bill Habermeyer, president and CEO of Progress, on Sunday. With 4,000 workers from contractors and utility crews, Progress’ 2,700 field crew members rebuilt half the system and all but 24 substations by Aug. 17. “In the very hardest-hit areas of our service area, like Polk, Highlands and Hardee counties, we are literally rebuilding the entire electrical infrastructure,” he said.

Storm researchers are gathering damage evidence and estimating wind speeds by analyzing structures of calculable strengths to determine the forces that would have been required to overload them. (Photo by Jeremy Gilstrap)

In the southwest part of the state, authorities of Florida Power & Light Co., Juno Beach, say the hardest-hit areas, mainly in Punta Gorda, Port Charlotte and Arcadia, look like the areas hit 12 years ago by Hurricane Andrew. The utility will have to rebuild the system in those areas, they say. Of 1.3 million customers in the counties affected by the storm, two-thirds lost power. In DeSoto County, the most severely damaged, 15,000 out of 15,700 customers, or 95.5%, lost power. Most of the damage to the transmission system “apparently has been repaired,” says Mike Schwebel, FPL spokesman, and all the damaged substations have been restored. But “hundreds if not thousands of (distribution) poles are down,” he says. “We’re still assessing the damage.”

Hurricane Charley's devastation has forced local emergency services contractors into full-blown mobilization, particularly in hard-hit counties. “The hurricane condensed itself at the last minute, like a giant tornado,” says Tony Swain, a manager at Grubbs Emergency Services Inc., a designated local disaster recovery contractor based in Brooksville, Fla., north of Tampa. “It took down almost everything that was standing up.”

Up to 400 crews may be mobilized for emergency contracts to clear roads, says Johnny DeLoach, senior project manager at Orlando-based PBS&J, a designated disaster response firm. "We’re still clearing roads to hospitals. It will be at least a week before we start doing assessments of infrastructure." He says finding places to dispose of millions of cubic yards of debris will be daunting. "We can’t take it to the landfills. There’s 20 years worth of landfill capacity here."

In hard-hit Charlotte County, he notes that roads were “blown out” by the storm surge and curbs torn out by uprooted trees. “We’re trying to get forces mobilized to...