Lake Buena Vista, Fla. ? Jon Gruden never will forget peering out the window in his hotel room and getting a close-up view of Hurricane Charley.

“When you see trees getting picked up and thrown out of the ground, it’s not something to laugh about,” the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ coach said Saturday.

“It was wild, it was unbelievable. The force that was displayed last night was something I hadn’t seen. It’s amazing that the damages weren’t as bad here as what they might have been.”

The Bucs train at Disney’s Wide World of Sports, just outside Orlando, and left the practice field Friday thinking they were safely out of the path of Charley, which was projected to hit the Tampa Bay area, about 75 miles away.

The Cincinnati Bengals, who arrived Thursday in Orlando with plans to wait out the storm before busing to Tampa for a preseason game Saturday night, also found themselves in the middle of the storm when the hurricane suddenly shifted course, slammed ashore on Florida’s Gulf Coast and raced up the middle of the state.

“We were educated just like everybody else about where it was projected to strike. So many of the players’ families came to Orlando to try to get away from it. Little did any of us know that here it comes right toward us. It was not good,” Gruden said.

“We had a meeting last night. A very short meeting, and we said (to the players) get back to your rooms and pay attention to what’s going on. We just don’t know what can happen.”

Charley smashed ashore packing 145 mph winds that diminished to 105 mph by the time the storm barreled through central Florida, knocking down trees, destroying property and leaving thousands without electricity.

Streets around the Bucs’ team hotel in nearby Celebration were littered with tree limbs, and the storm also left its mark at Disney’s Wide World of Sports, where the Bucs and Bengals each practiced Saturday.

A wooded area leading to the complex was littered with fallen trees, and the goal posts on two practice fields were bent and twisted.

And Gruden, accustomed to large crowds at training camp workouts, noted just a handful of fans showed up Saturday.

“It was very quiet, very eerie,” the coach said. “And when you drive to practice and see 1,500-pound palm trees ripped out of the ground — hundreds and hundreds of them — it lets you know how lucky you are to make it through the night.”

Bengals linebacker Nate Webster played the past four seasons with the Buccaneers and is a native of Miami, where he experienced Hurricane Andrew.

“I’ve been through a hurricane before. But a lot of the guys on the team hadn’t seen one. We just sat in the hotel, looked out the window and watched it,” Webster said.

“I knew Andrew. He came through my home and did some damage. We just stayed in and acted like we were watching Discovery Channel.”

The preseason game that was to be played Saturday was rescheduled for Monday night.