Dave Gayler/Superintendent, Charlotte Co. Schools it is such a wise decision to fortify your schools and your buildings withstand strong driving winds of a hurricane or a tornado no question about it. we were pretty sure that we had on our hands catastrophe the state of Florida in terms of a school system really hadn���t seen GRAPHIC: Hurricane Charley Aug. 13, 2004 Landfall: Punta Gorda, Fla. it took out 6 of our schools completely we have 20 schools we ended up with that storm that huge wind damaging 40% of our schools initially Jerry Olivo/Deputy Superintendent when you think of a catastrophic event like hurricane charley what we are looking at behind us is the silver lining at the end of the day being able to rebuild bigger and stronger to withstand any future events. GRAPHIC: Rebuilding Stronger FEMA-Florida Grants $27.7 million Charlotte County Schools sally was a fairly new school at the time of the storm just a few years old and was built to current code didn���t sustain really serious damage but it did sustain some windows certainly and doors Well the way that these shutters and the lightning system ended up here is with the assistance of a FEMA hazard mitigation grant GRAPHIC: FEMA-Florida Grants $6.2 million Disaster resistance measures countywide These shutters are going to keep the really the vast majority of debris from flying into the building through the window into classroom areas allowing wind and rain to come in. And of course if you don���t have your doors and windows blowing out then there���s less opportunity for the pressure coming in to take the roof up and off. The lighting arrestor system clearly that is helpful as we look at the number of storms we have the number of lightening storms we have in Florida any given time of the year but most certainly during the summer What we have behind us is the rebuilding of the historic charlotte high school campus The improvements obviously are current standards current codes built after the 2004 hurricane code went into effect so impact resistant window, fastening of the roofing the structure itself in its totality much better able to adapt to withstand an event and working with our partners at FEMA a collaborative approach to rebuilding affords us to have a stronger campus at the end of the day Charlie Shinkle, State of Florida Recovery Manager Charlotte County is definitely going to fare better from the same strength storm if it comes on shore again. They are built better today than they were before. Disaster Resistance Measures 2004 Projects Statewide $420 million Robert Ives, FEMA Florida Recovery Director the message that we have is rebuild stronger and clearly thorough the extraordinary amount of funding that was provided record setting funding that was provided both in the Public Assistance and Mitigation programs the state wide effort in FL has prepared you for future events to minimize the damage to have your critical facilities and structures open for business as soon as possible and to lessen the brunt of the cost to the taxpayers of the state The sense of comfort is what we have been able to do through things like the FEMA grant to harden our schools so we���re prepared