Major Tornado Sweeps Through Central Florida

Published: Feb 3, 2007

Grace Tota awoke about 3 a.m. and sat straight up in bed. She and three family members had spent the night at a local club rocking out to Elvis impersonators, drinking, dancing and later playing gin rummy at her home until 2 a.m. Then they almost died.

Awakened by the wind outside, Tota turned on the television and heard the blare of warnings. She ran to her sister's room and the two ran down the hall to where a relative and his wife slept.

Now the wind was roaring.

The relative, Quinto Musso, opened his eyes just in time to see a bedroom window explode. Tiny shards of glass blew through Tota's and her sister's thin nightgowns.

The wind plowed the women into the shag carpet. Musso tried to cover them with his body. Two bedroom doors blew off as the wind vacuumed Musso up in the air and 20 feet down the hallway. He slammed into every doorjamb on the way. His wife, Mary, rolled under the bed.

Then it stopped. But only for the people in The Villages, in Lake County.

The tornado and predawn thunderstorms tore through Lake, Volusia, Sumter and Seminole counties, killing at least 19 people, emergency officials say. With wind up to 165 miles per hour, it was the second deadliest tornado event in Florida history. The weather system left about 1,850 buildings splintered, smashed or batteredalong a 40-mile stretch. Volusia County reported a preliminary estimate of $80 million in damage involving 500 properties.

At least five vehicle crashes occurred within a quarter mile of one another near Interstate 4's New Smyrna Beach exit, closing the highway for about three hours.

In one case, a tractor-trailer was lifted up and landed on another semi, pinning the driver in his cab, said Kim Miller, a spokeswoman for the Florida Highway Patrol. The driver did not suffer life-threatening injuries, she said.

The damage was widespread, but Lake County took the hardest hit, said emergency operations director Jerry Smith. "This is basically the worst disaster to hit Lake County."

Among the dead were a male freshman from Umatilla High School, David Downing, and his parents, Carla and Donald Downing of the Paisley area. David, 15, was one of triplets.

His sister Heather was the only one in the family's trailer on Friday morning to survive the tornado. She suffered a broken pelvis and was in stable condition at an Orlando hospital, her aunt Eileen Humphrey said. The third triplet, Kayla, was staying at a relative's home near the family's trailer and was not injured.

At a mobile home park in Lady Lake, Marie Magana said her daughter, Brittany May, 17, died when an oak tree crashed into her room at the height of the storm. Friday afternoon, Magana picked Brittany's porcelain dolls and award ribbons for horseback riding out of the rubble where her bedroom had been.

A 7-year-old boy from the Paisley area also was confirmed dead, though not identified.

As it grew dark across the area, authorities with rescue dogs searched for people trapped in debris. Shelters opened to serve the newly homeless. At least 7,800 homes still were without power.

Officials in Lake and Volusia counties ordered dusk-to-dawn curfews in heavily damaged areas to prevent looting and injuries to residents trying to sift through wreckage in the dark.

Gov. Charlie Crist declared a state of emergency for the four counties. He said the state and its storm-weary residents would persevere, as they did after the hurricanes of 2004 and 2005.

"This is the Florida way," Crist said of the rescue and recovery effort.

Dealing with his first natural disaster since taking office a month ago, Crist canceled education and budget events to tour the region.

"It looks like a bomb went off on some of these homes, and it breaks your heart to see that," Crist told reporters after the helicopter landed at Lake Mack, near Paisley in eastern Lake County.

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.

Hitting The Villages just after 3 a.m., the tornado damaged the home of 70-year-old Noelie Bertoniere.

Bertoniere moved in less than a year ago after losing her New Orleans home to Hurricane Katrina. And in a way, this disaster was worse than Katrina.

"In this one I lost something that I didn't lose the last time - every picture, every slide I ever owned," she said. She later found only a few of the slides. She still hasn't found any pictures of her mother.

The worst of the storm hit between 3 and 4 a.m., jolting people from sleep with a noise some compared to a jumbo jet. Though a tornado watch had been posted for many Florida counties late Thursday, the National Weather Service issued warnings just minutes before the twister struck in the middle of the night, when hardly anyone was watching or listening for the warnings, said meteorologist Dave Sharp of the weather service's Melbourne office.

"The most dangerous tornado scenario is a threat for killer tornadoes at night, and that was the case," Sharp said.

Few communities in the region have warning sirens. Unlike many tornado-prone areas, few Florida homes have basements because of the high water table, so the best shelter is a closet or interior room.

Vern Huber, 87, of Lady Lake, said his weather radio alarm went off around 3:30 a.m. and he and his wife, Louedna, 81, huddled in the hall and put pillows from the couch on top of themselves.

"It was a deafening roar," Huber said.

Nearby, the Church of God in Lady Lake was being demolished. The 31-year-old steel-reinforced structure was built to withstand 150 mph winds, but the tornado tore it apart, leaving its pews, altar and Bibles in a jumbled mess.

In Paisley, on the eastern edge of Lake County, Saul Castro, 42, said he heard the tornado sometime after 3 a.m. He woke his wife, Evita, and their two children and they scrambled into the bathroom of their doublewide mobile home.

The house tumbled around them, torn to splinters, Castro said, but he, Evita and the children surfaced with only scratches and bruises.

Castro's neighbors, however, died in the storm. The middle-age couple owned a produce stand in Volusia County and Castro said they brought corn, tomatoes and fruit to people in the neighborhood.

At least 13 people died in the Paisley area. The survivors spent Friday searching through the wreckage strewn about their streets. Mobile homes lay twisted around trees or tumbled into ponds and lakes. Plastic lawn chairs hung on downed power lines.

Castro, a mechanic in Deland, picked through his belongings: a pink robe, a plastic swan, a broken white fan. He'd lost much, but was grateful. "All I know is, we were lucky," he said.

Nellie Byrd, 75, searched through the rubble of her home in her pink housecoat. She picked up a muddy plastic doll, then put it back down and continued on. Her husband, Ed Byrd, inspected his overturned GMC pickup.

Most in the Paisley/Lake Mack area lost everything they owned. Ilse Campbell, 71, had lived in her hunting camp in Paisley for 20 years. She swam in the alligator-infested pond behind her home. "I found this. I fell in love with this," she said. "I'm a loner. It's all I wanted."

She sat on a split piece of cedar, messy with dirt, dried blood on her head. She was rushed to a hospital in Deland after the storm and returned to find that only one of her four cats had been found.

Later in the afternoon, Lake County sheriff's deputies broadcast that everyone in the neighborhood had to leave by dusk, a curfew ordered by the county.

Back at Lady Lake, the parishioners of the Church of God were making plans to hold church services Sunday, despite what the tornado had done to their building.

"I'm still the pastor of a church. People are the church. This is temporal. This is temporary," said the Rev. Larry Lynn, walking beneath sheets of roofing tin hanging from shorn tree limbs. They creaked in the soft afternoon wind.

From the looks of the damage, Lynn said, the 15,000-square-foot church seems to have imploded.

As Lynn looked over the wreckage, church members searched it for church possessions. They found crucifixes, the church's framed statement of doctrine and the Bible that Lynn uses in his pulpit.

"It's the Bible our preacher preaches from every Sunday. I thought it was important," said Renee Lipps, 24, who crept through the mess to find the valued book.

Church member Joe Kowalsky recovered the soiled banner of the boys' group he leads.

Asked how a man of God confronts an act of God, Lynn had a quick answer: "The building wasn't my foundation, Christ is. He'll continue to be, and as a matter of fact I came to know him on a stormy night in Michigan many years ago. So me and storms are acquainted."

Quinto Musso was also thinking of God after the storm. "You thank God you're alive," he said.

Tota's sister, Mary Ann Fanelli, a retired nurse, had patched Musso with butterfly bandages to keep the wound on his head from opening. His face was bruised, and he still had tiny spots of broken glass sparkling on his arm.

The house in The Villages was covered with dirt from the filthy wind that had blown through. Grass coated the doors and a shingle protruded from the dining room wall at eye level. Things that were supposed to be outside were inside.

Strangers wandered through the back yard, mesmerized by the insulation, shingles and siding that lay tangled in the bushes. Neighbors who had less damage helped those who had more.

All afternoon, people who Fanelli and Tota didn't know asked whether they needed help. Strangers packed everything that wasn't broken into boxes.

Outside, on a pile of dishcloths, shingles and insulation, the jack of hearts lay face up.

Information from Tribune wires was used in this report. Reporter Lindsay Peterson can be reached at lpeterson@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7834.

FATAL FLORIDA STORMS

Since 1950, five tornado systems have been to blame for multiple deaths in Florida.

Year	Counties	Deaths
1962	Santa Rosa	17
1966	Pinellas, Polk	11
1993	Lake, Alachua, Baker, Escambia	7
1998	Orange, Seminole, Osceola	40
2007	Lake, Sumter, Volusia	19*

Here are the deadliest tropical storms to strike Florida since 1900.

Year	Name	Strength	Deaths
1926	Great Miami Hurricane	Category 4	373
1928	Okeechobee Hurricane	Category 4	1,836
1935	Labor Day Hurricane	Category 5	408
1960	Donna	Category 4	12
1992	Andrew	Category 4	44**
1994	Gordon	tropical storm	8
2004	Charley	Category 4	29**
2004	Frances	Category 2	37**
2004	Ivan	Category 3	29**
2005	Katrina	Category 2	14

* Preliminary numbers

** Includes deaths caused directly and indirectly by the storms

Research by MICHAEL MESSANO; Sources: NOAA, Florida Almanac

FATAL FLORIDA STORMS

Since 1950, five tornado systems have been to blame for multiple deaths in Florida.

Here are the deadliest tropical storms to strike Florida since 1900.