Residents struggle to recover from storms in triplicate

It's hard to tell what damage is from which storm.
LAKE WALES, Fla. (AP) -- After three hurricanes roared through central Florida in the space of six weeks, Annette Sisanh's 5-year-old son, Logan, has learned to keep a wary eye on the sky.
"Every time he sees a black cloud, he comes inside and says, 'Mommy, mommy, it's coming again,"' Sisanh said after the last devastating storm, Hurricane Jeanne, blew through last Sunday.
The storms scared the wits out of Sisanh's large family of children and foster children. Their manufactured house was damaged, they lost dozens of trees, and the power went out after each storm.
But the family was luckier than most others in the sparsely populated rural community of Alturas near Lake Wales, which was square in the path of three of the four hurricanes that ravaged Florida in this historic season.
Some people had already started repairing the damage to their homes from Hurricane Charley -- which came ashore in southwest Florida on Aug. 13 and raced northeast -- when Frances swept through Aug. 29 from the east.
Then, Jeanne took a swipe last Sunday, roughly following Frances' path.
A first
Besides being one of the state's leading producers of citrus, Polk County can now claim another distinction: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says it's the first time three hurricanes hit the same county in one season since it began keeping records in 1890.
The coastal areas where the storms came ashore absorbed the brunt of the storms' fury. Lake Wales, a town of 10,000 about 55 miles east of Tampa, and the rural southern part of Polk County got hurricane-force winds and buckets of rain each time.
Amy Hill, 32, who lives near Sisanh and was helping her with bottled water and ice that emergency management officials had dropped off for distribution, said she is thankful it wasn't worse.
"Despite all the anger, disappointment, depression, whatever, everyone is just so thankful we're all alive," she said.
Thousands in the area remained without power, and schools have not reopened since Hurricane Jeanne. Signs of the storms were everywhere.
In Lake Wales, where old and new neighborhoods surround a quaint, historic downtown, blue tarps that covered holes torn in roofs by Charley were pulled off by Frances and Jeanne.
Mobile homes were battered, some reduced to piles of sticks. Trees were snapped off by tornados or pulled up by the roots by high winds. Fruit trees that survived were ringed by piles of rotting fruit.
Damage estimates
Charley caused about $700 million in damage to thousands of Polk County homes, and Frances caused an additional $100,000 or so. Estimates for Jeanne were still in the works, but officials said it was getting hard to tell which storm caused what damage.
President Bush came to Lake Wales on Wednesday, touring a family citrus farm and pledging to help with federal money.
"I think we're probably at the stage now where we're just beginning to accept the reality of the situation and trying to put our lives back together," said sheriff Lawrence Crow.
Bill Holton, 37, lived with his father and ex-wife until Charley laid waste to their single-wide mobile home. They moved to his sister's house, where a tarp covered the leaky roof after Charley. Frances came along and caved in his sister's ceiling, only to be followed by Jeanne, which tore the tarps loose.
"I told my father, this is it for me," he said. "I'm going back to Jersey."
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