Death Toll Rises to 20 in Central Florida
By Phil Long, Tania Deluzuriaga and Larry Lebowitz, The Miami Herald
Feb. 3–PAISLEY — The death toll from twisters reached 20, officials confirmed today, with the small town of Paisely in Lake County accounting for 13, and another seven dead in Lady Lake, about 30 miles to the west.
Storms moving through the area at 55 mph were hampering recovery efforts this chilly morning. Thunder clapped amid the lightening as residents were slowly allowed back into their neighborhoods by mid morning. Power crews geared up to restore electricity to areas devastated by fierce squalls.
The National Weather Service said today that the tornado that hit Paisley was a category F3, with winds of 150 mph.
A dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed for the affected areas for this weekend, and some authorities grew concerned about looting as tens of thousands of Floridians coped with the aftermath of another assault by nature. Gov. Charlie Crist returned to Lady Lake today to continue to assess the damage.
The American Red Cross, the Heart of Florida United Way, the Salvation Army and Catholic Charities of Central Florida were among the organizations accepting donations and volunteers to help thousands affected by the storms that roared through Lady Lake and headed east through New Smyrna Beach early Friday.
The fierce and persistent line of squalls that sliced through the center of the state left dozens injured and countless Floridians traumatized.
“This reminds me of Hurricane Andrew, on a smaller scale, in a smaller area,” Sara Rodriguez said Friday, as she surveyed the damage in a neighborhood west of downtown DeLand.
Parts of the area truly resembled South Miami-Dade County after it was bulldozed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Another historical footnote: Friday’s storms struck on the ninth anniversary of Florida’s ferocious “Groundhog Day Storm” of 1998.
More then 500 homes in DeLand sustained an estimated $80 million in damage, officials said. And it was equally bad — or worse — in many other parts of a 40-mile-long swath of the region.
Tornadic winds that forecasters said might have exceeded 165 mph destroyed or damaged more than 1,850 buildings in Lake, Sumter, Seminole and Volusia counties.
The storms splintered houses and flattened a church built to withstand 150-mph winds. Falling trees crushed cars and trucks. Clothing, bedding and other debris dangled from branches.
Gov. Charlie Crist declared a state of emergency. He said the state and its storm-weary residents would persevere, as they did after the barrages of hurricanes in 2004 and 2005. “This is the Florida way,” Crist said of the rescue and recovery effort.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it was processing the state’s application for emergency assistance. The Florida National Guard mustered 8,000 soldiers and awaited orders to distribute food, water and first aid.
Officials in Lake County confirmed 13 deaths near the communities of Lake Mack, Bear Lake and Paisley, about 50 miles northwest of Orlando. Six deaths were reported in or near Lady Lake, also in Lake County. Authorities could not account for two people missing near Lake Mack.
Among the dead: David Downing, a 15-year-old whose two sisters — David was their triplet — survived. David’s parents, Donald, 46, and Carla, 35, perished with their son after a tornado hit their mobile home near the Ocala National Forest. Brittany May, a 17-year-old Leesburg High School senior who lived in Lady Lake, was killed by a crashing tree. William “Jacob” Nolan, a 7-year-old second-grader at Spring Creek Elementary near Paisley, died, as did his father Billy Nolan, a carpenter.
Rodriguez, who moved to Orange City from Miami in 1998, spent Friday afternoon helping her friends move their belongings out of their storm-damaged home.
“It took forever to get into DeLand,” she said. ‘I got here and said, ‘Oh, my God, it’s Hurricane Andrew all over again.’ “
Rodriguez headed to DeLand as soon as she heard that her friends Bob and Rosemary Wilson had lost their home. “I’d want somebody to do this for me,” she said.
There, she found an entire neighborhood devastated. Shingles, insulation, tree branches and twisted pieces of metal littered the ground.
The Wilsons’ RV and 27-foot boat sat in a misshapen pile in what was once the living room. The garage walls sat in a crumpled heap around a red Corvette.
“It was over before you could think about it,” said Bob Wilson, who has lived in DeLand for 24 years.
With just a small flashlight for illumination, the couple had to wait until dawn to assess the damage.
“When the sun came up and you could see what it was, I almost collapsed,” Rosemary Wilson said.
The fierce squalls — including two “super cells” that forecasters said generated several tornadoes with winds greater than 100 mph — attacked under cover of darkness, enhancing the terror, and the unsettled weather persisted into the afternoon.
Tornadoes or apparent tornadoes were reported near Frostproof in Polk County, near Wildwood in Sumter County, near Weirsdale in Marion County and in many areas of rural Lake County.
‘It was 15 seconds of ‘holy crap,’ ” said Keith McDaniel, 35, a welder who moved to Lady Lake from Fort Lauderdale a year ago. “No one ever expected this. I thought hurricanes were bad.”
The Lady Lake Church of God was demolished, its pews, altar and Bibles scattered to the wind. A steel-reinforced structure, the church also served as an emergency shelter and was built to endure 150-mph winds, the Rev. Larry Lynn said.
“It’s total destruction,” he said, “but only of the building. Our church is our people, and we’re still here.”
Several miles northwest of Lady Lake, a sprawling retirement community called The Villages absorbed a direct hit from at least one tornado.
Up to 500 houses were destroyed or heavily damaged, and cars were tossed 100 feet or more. No deaths or injuries were immediately reported in The Villages. About 50,000 people live in the area, which stretches from Lake County into Sumter County.
The line of severe weather — advancing from the Gulf of Mexico toward the Atlantic coast and carving an east-northeast path through the center of the state — propelled destructive thunderstorms through many other areas.
The National Weather Service issued tornado watches hours before the storms arrived and provided eight to 16 minutes of specific tornado warnings before the twisters hit — about average for the type of alert. But with most people sound asleep, those warnings were heard and heeded by very few.
The storms struck at about 3:10 a.m. in The Villages and 3:15 a.m. in the Lady Lake area, forecasters said. And the first warning for many was the roar, which really did sound like a freight train.
“The only thing I heard was a freight train, and I didn’t hear anything but a freight train,” said Dale Bridges, who moved to Lady Lake from Plantation more than a year ago after his family’s home was severely damaged in Hurricane Wilma.
This time, he was in luck. His mobile home survived, as did his parents’ brick home across the street and his brother’s home two doors down. But they were literally powerless, and as nightfall approached, Bridges, wearing a Chicago Bears T-shirt and drinking a beer, watched crews slice through the limbs of 150-year-old oak trees that had crashed into power lines.
The outbreak of severe weather reminded many meteorologists and others of the Groundhog Day Storm nine years earlier.
Forecasters had predicted the possibility of a repeat performance by nature this year, noting the existence of the same El Nino conditions that helped fuel the 1998 storms.
El Nino, which occur when water in the eastern Pacific Ocean becomes unusually warm, can bend the jet stream and propel strong cold fronts into and through Florida. When a cold front meets warm, tropical air — as one did in Central Florida on Friday morning — severe weather often erupts.
“This was a pretty classic El Nino event,” said Robert Molleda, the National Weather Service’s warning coordinator for South Florida.
He noted that three weeks after the Groundhog Day Storm, a bevy of tornadoes pummeled Central Florida, killing 42 people. There is a lesson there, he said.
“This is the time of year — February through April and even into May — when we can get tornadoes in Florida from these cold fronts, especially in an El Nino year,” Molleda said. “We need to continue to be alert.”
Miami Herald staff writers Marc Caputo, Martin Merzer Noah Bierman, Lesley Clark and Gary Fineout contributed to this report.
—–
Copyright (c) 2007, The Miami Herald
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.