Lessons from Charley

He's going the extra mile with the new building, although it has cost a lot more, largely due to steel and concrete shortages. "Compared to if I'd done this a year-and-a-half ago, it's sickening, truly sickening," he says.

Next time, he'll make sure the insurance pays to actually rebuild, not just for the worth of the old building. But he doubts it will come to that. "I wasn't going to take a chance on it this time," he says. "This building will be here the next 100 years."

Mark Weiser

President of Artistic Gourmet, Inc.

Both of Mark Weiser's Punta Gorda shops were damaged, but he was among the first to reopen along the devastated West Marion Avenue, in spite of having no power, no water and no front window. The storm sucked out the window, but left the contents with little damage.

His second shop, Artistic Gourmet Entertains, fared worse, and it was uninsured because the insurance he'd applied for had not yet gone through. He's glad he reopened so quickly. It got his small staff back to work and, along with the neighboring restaurants that also reopened quickly, helped set an example for the devastated town.

However, he adds, "I learned not to trust insurance companies." In addition to the surprise that he got in learning his second shop wasn't covered, his interruption insurance didn't provide the safety net he had counted on.

Kristine Wishard

President, Gateway Property Management, Port Charlotte

Gateway manages townhouse, condominium and mobile-home associations in the Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte area, and of its 35 clients, only three had no claims to file after the hurricane. In addition, the company lost its office, Wishard lost her home, and her husband had heart surgery within a week of the storm. She has since spoken at hurricane seminars to share her experience.

"If you're going to rent, rent in a building with a financial institution or find space near a hospital," she advises. "Hospitals have priority for restoring power." Banks, she says, "have huge incentives to get back up and open," which can help you recover sooner, too.

She made a mistake in delaying the search for new office space, because everything was snapped up within the week-and-a-half she put it off. Eventually, she found space for

$8,000 a month-compared with the $2,800 she had been paying-and later found out that her insurance wouldn't cover the cost.

With so much more work-and some seasonal residents who simply refused to respond as water from their units seeped into their neighbors' homes-Wishard needed more staff, but unemployment was so low that few even responded to her ads, and once they received their insurance checks, most decided not to start work immediately.

And the emotional cost was huge. "Every one of our employees was going through stages of grief and everyone was at different stages, but they were trying to work at the same time," she says. "We maybe should have tried to find a professional grief counselor to sit with them once a week."