dollar homes on exclusive islands off the coast. "This type of hurricane only happens once every hundred years, they say," said Harry Thomas, looking over his destroyed Pelican Cove bayside motel in Port Charlotte. "I could have lived and died twice." President George W. Bush, Jeb Bush's brother, declared Florida a disaster area to speed emergency assistance. The president planned to visit the area on Sunday. Forecasters had expected Charley to hit Tampa area further north and nearly 2 million people were told to evacuate. But the hurricane gathered strength and made a last-minute turn that brought it ashore further south, swiping people who had ignored evacuation orders because they thought they would be safe. Charley was blamed for four deaths in Cuba and one in Jamaica after it formed in the Caribbean on Tuesday. As a Category 4 storm -- the second strongest on a scale used to rate hurricanes -- Charley was one of the most dangerous storms to hit Florida. Hurricane Andrew, which hit Miami in August 1992 and caused $25 billion in damage, was a Category 5. By 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT), Charley had been downgraded to a tropical storm as it moved inland, with its center about about 35 miles (56 km) north of Wilmington, North Carolina.
