Word came too late for Pat Daniels Wise and her husband, Ernest Wise, former Natchez residents, to leave their home near Naples, Fla., as Hurricane Charley approached Saturday.

&uot;We were told it was going to hit Tampa Bay,&uot; Pat Wise said from her interior decorating business Monday as she described the weekend

experience. &uot;At about 11 o’clock, we learned through the local weather service that it had turned.&uot;

Expecting a stormy day &045;&045; but not the brunt of the hurricane, the Wises had decided to stay at home. Like many others in the densely populated west-central Florida, the Wises were prepared for 90-mile-an-hour winds, the kinds associated with a Category 1 hurricane. They thought they were safe.

As it turned out, they were safe.

The storm passed to the north, and the preparations they had made paid off.

&uot;We took the good stuff off the walls, brought in the patio furniture and put everything in the center hall,&uot; she said. &uot;It was bad, but nothing like it was at Punta Gorda.&uot;

The Wises lost electricity for most of the day and had a little water seep into the master bedroom. &uot;We were expecting flooding, but we didn’t get anything,&uot; she said.

The main damage to their neighborhood of Pelican Landing was to the landscape &045;&045; particularly old live oak trees.

The eye of Hurricane Charley made landfall to the north of Naples as a Category 4 storm with 145 mph winds, above populous Fort Meyers and directly across the small community of Punta Gorda, where Natchez natives Beth Barry Geisenberger and her husband, Sam, live.

Efforts to reach the Geisenbergers Monday were unsuccessful, but Beth Geisenberger’s sister, Barbara Barry Rhodes of Natchez, said she talked to Beth on Sunday.

&uot;After I had called the Red Cross, the police and everyone else I could think of, I finally talked to her yesterday,&uot; Rhodes said. &uot;They are fine. But she said she won’t do that again.&uot;