Florida cleaning up — again

PENSACOLA, Fla. — Shell-shocked Floridians began to clean up Friday after their third hurricane pummeling in five weeks, while Alabamans looked at the crumbled condos and shattered beach homes along their coast and wondered how many months it would take for life to return to normal.

The hurricanes have left virtually all of Florida a disaster area, and the recovery from Ivan has been complicated by widespread power outages, washed-out roads and bridges, and ongoing gas shortages. In some areas, emergency workers had to be flown in by helicopters, and authorities said it could take weeks to restore water, power and sewer services in parts of the hard-hit Panhandle.

"You've got to take the bad with the good," said 42-year-old Tracie Stitt, who stood in a pile of cinderblock and tile that once was the home she and her husband shared with her in-laws near Perdido Bay.

"If you live in California it'd be earthquakes, if you live in Kansas it'd be tornadoes, up north it's snowstorms," she said. "There's not a perfect place on earth. You've just got to take your losses and pray and go on."

Ivan was the deadliest hurricane to hit the United States since Floyd in 1999. In all, Ivan was blamed for 70 deaths in the Caribbean and at least 39 in the United States, 15 of them in Florida.

Near Pensacola on Friday, divers recovered the body of a truck driver who died when the cab of his tractor-trailer fell off an Interstate 10 bridge that had been broken apart by the hurricane. The trailer was perched precariously on the bridge, its front portion apparently torn off by Ivan's winds.

The bridge closing over Escambia Bay diverted local traffic to U.S. 90, which was backed up for more than 10 miles.

On the Alabama coast, the floodwaters of Ivan that turned beach playgrounds into huge lakes began to recede, revealing widespread wreckage. At Gulf Shores, some homes were swept over a beach road littered with thousands of air conditioning units, boards and roofing shingles.

"For a lot of people it will be a real struggle to be ready before Memorial Day," Mayor David Bodenhamer said.

Gov. Bob Riley, who toured the area Friday, said he was "absolutely shocked at the devastation" but promised a swift, full cleanup and recovery.

"This is the gem of the South," Riley said. "We've got to clean it up as quickly as we can."

About 660,000 Alabama homes and businesses remained without power Friday afternoon, down from the state record 1.1 million power outages reported after Ivan roared through the state Thursday.

In Florida, Ivan struck at a time when the state is still reeling from Hurricanes Charley and Frances. Charley ravaged the state's west coast five weeks ago, while Frances pounded the east over Labor Day weekend.