In fact, he's leaving the boards on his windows so he's ready to go again if another storm on the radar, Tropical Storm Earl, scores a direct hit.

``I guess Charley blazed a hole through the Caribbean there, and it's easy for them to follow now,'' Lindstrom said Saturday.

Other Tampa Bay area residents who fled Charley late Thursday or early Friday, only to see it go elsewhere, agreed they had done the right thing and would do it again.

``I don't want to wait it out,'' said Kim Sluder of Hudson, who took her family from their mobile home to an elementary school shelter. ``There is no way I would put my kids at risk.''

Everything in her home is replaceable, she said, except her husband and children.

Frank and Jane Gomes of Madeira Beach piled into the car with their 11-year-old daughter, Stephanie, dog and two cockatiels and left their waterfront home at 8 a.m. Friday. They spent the night at a pet-friendly hotel in Tampa.

They, too, will keep things packed as they watch the new storm roiling toward Cuba.

Jane Gomes said she realized a little late that they needed weeks instead of days to get ready - to put valuables and important papers in a place where they could be retrieved easily. She worked until she was exhausted Thursday night, not having finished everything.

``You start getting very depressed, because you know that this may be it, and you don't have, really, enough time,'' she said. ``You may walk out of this home and say goodbye to it.''

Not everyone had the same assessment.

Lornie Mueller, who stayed Friday in his Treasure Island home, said Bay area emergency officials called too soon for an evacuation and should have rescinded it when it was obvious the storm was veering inland.

``What did it cost the businesses in Pinellas and Hillsborough, being closed two or three days?'' he asked.

Mueller, who plotted the storm on his computer, said he determined at 8 a.m. Friday that the storm was off its projected path and would move south of the area. He said he would have evacuated later in the process had Charley headed this way.

``This is the second time they said we've got to leave, and the second time I haven't left because I didn't think it was coming,'' he said.

Robert Daniels of south Tampa's Sunset Park neighborhood said authorities should have had a better plan to get elderly residents home from shelters in timely fashion.

Although the evacuation order was lifted in Hillsborough County at 9:30 p.m. Friday, many elders had to stay the night at Middleton High School. Daniels stayed to help them.

``The elderly people were there all night and it was difficult for them,'' he said.

Reporter Philip Morgan can be reached at (813) 259-7609. Reporter Falguni Bhuta can be reached at (813) 259-7620.