MARCO ISLAND — Marco

Just 40 residents remain at Paradise Pointe trailer park. But that’s normal for the off-season, said Manager Jimmy Pauley.

Those residents that were still there late Monday morning probably planned to stay there through the night, Pauley said. The near-empty gated community sits just northeast of Marco Island.

“They all make plans to go to hotels, but they’ll wait first to see what happens to the storm,” he said. “Up to 70 mile an hour winds, they’ll stay in these — they’re pretty strong.”

Down the street from the Paradise Pointe office, Wayne Hoffer and Buddy Rowe set up a generator outside Rowe’s trailer.

“Charley was kind of rough,” said Rowe. “I watched the debris fly past my windshield.”

If a storm that strong ever came through again, he said, he wouldn’t stick around.

“It was bad.”

Flying debris is the biggest worry at the park, said Pauley

“We’re at 7-foot elevation,” he said. “We’re at a higher elevation than Marco Island. Our big thing is the debris — the flying lawn chairs.”

— Leslie Williams

Everglades City

From behind the desk at the Everglades City Visitor Center, Betty Holbert watched one person after another march in Monday morning.

“We were going to close at 12, but we’ve had so many people coming in, (my manager) asked if I could stick around for just another hour,” Holbert said.

Just then, a man with a thick French accent wandered in, collecting brochures for nearby state parks.

“That one’s closed today,” she told him.

“All these are closed?” he asked with a dismayed look.

She picked brochures out of his hand, showing him which tour guides were operating and which parks were already shut down.

“I can’t believe how many people I’m getting today,” she said.

Just up the road, in Everglades City, it was business as usual for Captain Doug’s Airboat Tours.

“I’ve got two more boats going out at 1:30,” said Teresa Grimes, as someone sidled up to buy tickets for a tour.

“We don’t expect much out of this,” she said. “Some thunderstorms have just as much wind as this is gonna have.”

When Hurricane Wilma passed through Southwest Florida in 2005, Everglades City and Chokoloskee bore the brunt of the storm’s force.

Bob Miller, owner of The Oyster House Restaurant, said that was the only time in 17 years he ever saw the water creep up to his property.

His collection of businesses sits on the road from Everglades City south to Chokoloskee, facing the mangroves bordering a vast bay in the Ten Thousand Islands.

“We’re just battening down, taking the boats out of the water,” he said.

Aside from selling more batteries and water than the average day, Miller said, his store had not been too busy. Most people were taking the hurricane watch in stride, he said, though some people were getting antsy.

“(People) are apprehensive because nobody ever tells the truth,” he said, taking a shot at weather forecasters.

If you ask Miller, the storm won’t come anywhere near his old Florida outpost.

“We’re an island,” he said. “We plan for the worst and hope for the best.”

Dave Prickett concedes he hoped for a little too much last time.

His mobile home on the eastern edge of Chokoloskee washed away during the storm.

On Monday afternoon, he was tying his charter fishing boat down, planning to weather the storm in his new home, sitting some 14 feet above sea level on cinder block pilings.

“I ain’t even scared,” he said. “I got wiped out after Wilma.”

Around the corner from Prickett’s home, a few people sat in a front yard Monday afternoon chatting and drinking beer amid the drizzle. They declined an interview, and as a reporter walked away, one man shouted, “This ain’t gonna be a storm!”

Back at the visitor’s center, Holbert got ready to shut down for the day. She was preparing to return to her Chokoloskee home, a trailer in a sparsely occupied park.

“There’s only about seven of us there in the park,” she said.

Though her trailer flooded during Wilma, leaving the bottom in need of replacement, she had no intention of leaving for the night.

“My girlfriend called from Northport, and another lady’s going to a hotel,” she said. “But, I just can’t see paying $150 for a hotel in Naples. So, I’m going to wait and see. Hopefully it’ll all work out.”

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