Pensacola, Fla. ? Shellshocked Floridians began to clean up Friday after their third hurricane pummeling in five weeks, while Alabamans looked at the crumbled condos and shattered beach homes along their coast and wondered how many months it would take for life to return to normal.

The hurricanes have left virtually all of Florida a disaster area, and the recovery from Ivan has been complicated by widespread power outages, washed-out roads and bridges, and ongoing gas shortages. In some areas, emergency workers had to be flown in by helicopters, and authorities said it could take weeks to restore water, power and sewer services in parts of the hard-hit Panhandle.

Hurricane Ivan did considerable Damage in Pensacola, Fla. the Grande Lagoon subdivision off Gulf Beach Highway in Pensacola remained closed Friday -- a day after the hurricane tore through the area -- while officials searched for survivors.

“You’ve got to take the bad with the good,” said 42-year-old Tracie Stitt, who stood in a pile of cinderblock and tile that once was the home she and her husband shared with her in-laws near Perdido Bay.

“If you live in California it’d be earthquakes, if you live in Kansas it’d be tornadoes, up north it’s snowstorms,” she said. “There’s not a perfect place on earth. You’ve just got to take your losses and pray and go on.”

Ivan was the deadliest hurricane to hit the United States since Floyd in 1999. In all, Ivan was blamed for 70 deaths in the Caribbean and at least 39 in the United States, 15 of them in Florida.

On the Alabama coast, the floodwaters of Ivan that turned beach playgrounds into huge lakes began to recede, revealing widespread wreckage. At Gulf Shores, some homes were swept over a beach road.

“For a lot of people it will be a real struggle to be ready before Memorial Day,” Mayor David Bodenhamer said.

About 660,000 Alabama homes and businesses remained without power Friday afternoon, down from the state record 1.1 million power outages reported after Ivan roared through the state Thursday.