LEWISTON – Charlie Pomerleau is not impressed by the fact that he shares a name with a hurricane. By Friday afternoon, the former Poland man was just hoping to survive the storm.

“It was looking like we’d be at ground zero for a while. We were looking at getting flattened,” the 49-year-old said.

Pomerleau is a news editor at the Herald in Bradenton, a city just north of the area where Hurricane Charley swept into Florida on Friday afternoon.

“We’re getting a lot of wind and a lot of rain,” he said about 6 p.m. “But we’re breathing easy. The storm came in south of us and spared us the worst of the damage.”

With winds whipping at 145 mph, weather experts were predicting Hurricane Charley could be the worst storm to hit Florida in at least 15 years.

Pomerleau, a Maine native and a former Sun Journal reporter, said he has learned quickly how to prepare for a hurricane since moving to Florida four years ago. And he recognized Friday that major destruction was just narrowly missed as the storm swept in beneath the peninsula city where he lives.

“It could have been a wall of water 10 feet high coming across our island barrier,” he said.

In Maine, roughly 1,500 miles from the eye of the storm, anyone with friends or relatives in Florida was keeping up with news about the hurricane.

“I have a best friend who lives in Orlando, right in the path of it,” said 55-year-old Linda Leiva of Lewiston. “I have a cousin in Jacksonville and an uncle in Deland. And my daughter is on a cruise in the Caribbean as we speak. I’ve got the weather channel on. I’m definitely paying attention.”

In Orlando, which was expected to get pounded by Hurricane Charlie on Friday night, Wayne Waters and his wife got a giant pizza for dinner. They figured that would keep their bellies full as the storm swept through, and plenty would be left over for breakfast.

Waters, 49, lives in Apopka, a suburb of Orlando. The storm was expected to pass through that city Friday night as it moved north and east.

“We’ve lost power once already, but it came back on,” Waters said. “We are bracing for what appears to be a very long night. We’re expecting winds from 80 to 100 miles per hour.”

Waters and his wife were making preparations to survive the storm. They hauled in hanging plants, decorations and lawn furniture. And they were prepared for the possibility they might spend part of the weekend without power.

“We’ve got enough water for a couple days and bags of ice to pack food in, if necessary,” Waters said. “It’s a situation of wait-and-see right now.”

At 7 p.m., Waters said the air was ominously dry and still while the area remained between bands of rain. But minutes later, he reported that leaves on nearby trees were beginning to stir in a developing breeze.

“The animals sense that there is something going on,” Waters said. “Both cats are hiding under the bed.”

Meanwhile, Linda Leiva was keeping abreast of the latest news about the storm. Her 29-year-old daughter, Erin, was on one of several cruise ships that changed course to get out of the way of the approaching storm. Leiva said she talked to her daughter Tuesday but has been unable to reach her since. She went to the Internet to learn where the cruise ship was sailing.

“I had to go on a Web site to find her,” Levia said. “It’s her first cruise. She’s all by herself.”

Others in Maine had trouble reaching friends or loved ones on the western coast of Florida early Friday night. One woman said she could not reach a friend who lives in Bonita Spring, just south of the area where the hurricane swept in on the mainland. A Lewiston man was unable to reach a relative who lives in Port Charlotte. Both reported busy signals when they tried to call Florida. It was believed phone lines were down in those areas.