Florida tornado

Here is a summary of some of my experiences during the tornado that ripped through Lake (where I live) and Volusia (where I work) counties: 

I snapped awake at about 4 a.m. Friday to the braying of my pager. As a spokesperson for a sheriff’s office, I am on call evenings and weekends. So, I groggily rolled out of bed to call the person paging me when the pager went off a second time. I know from experience that one page might not be a big deal, but multiple pages in succession mean I might as well wake the heck up because my day is about to jump-start.

Assignment editors at the various TV stations were all over me the moment I called in to them. They wanted to know about possible reports of tornadoes and resulting damage in my county. I called the dispatch supervisor at our communications center and discover that there’s chaos, but no details to feed to the media yet. It’s dark and the storm is still mowing across the county. As a matter of fact, lightning is popping all around my house and the wind is whipping trees around like party streamers. I reported back to the TV stations what little I could and even went live on the air with one to report on what I’m seeing around me. However, the situation got kinda silly as the anchor asked me about damage in the area. I had to tell him that I couldn’t be of any help there as I could barely see out of my front door.

I waited a few minutes for a pause in the storm and then jumped into my car to, hopefully, make my way into work. Luckily, the roads were clear enough for me to get where I needed to go and the wind died down a few notches. I started coordination with my boss on my cell phone and was directed out to a consolidated command post where rescue crews and law enforcement were staging. But as I changed course to head there I came upon an overturned semi-trailer blocking most of the highway. It was difficult to make out what the area around the wreck looked like in the dark, but lightning flashes revealed glimpses of snapped trees and a metal road sign literally twisted into a spiral. Later in the day when I passed that spot again it was obvious that a tornado had jaywalked across the highway and tipped that truck right over.

To me, that’s a fascinating aspect of tornadoes. Their path is so clear, as if a sci-fi creature had stomped across town. You can drive down the road and see the same old scenery you are used to, but then all of the sudden you drive right into an eerie other world where everything is upside down and inside out. Then a moment later you’re right back into life as normal.

Once I finally arrived at the command center I quickly joined the human maelstrom of emergency response. We were set up in a shopping center parking lot that was quickly getting packed with mobile command trailers and emergency vehicles. I fell into my practiced routine of finding the incident commander and other staff to collect information and paint a picture in my mind of the overall situation. However, this early on there were many blank spots in that picture. We all knew we had a disaster on our hands, but it would be a while before the full scope of it was realized.

Early reports came in of destroyed buildings; some of these weren’t mobile homes, but rather brick structures. A district headquarters of the sheriff’s office was nearly demolished. One deputy reported that he was in his patrol car in the district headquarters parking lot when suddenly his vehicle was shoved about 25 feet across the pavement and into a wall. The windows shattered and debris collapsed onto his roof. He had completed his deputy training just two weeks ago, and so this was a quick trial by fire for a rookie. He nonetheless stayed calm and radioed in his situation. A short time later he was out of his car and asking the sheriff for a new car so he could get back to work helping out the disaster response. The sheriff looked at this dirt-caked deputy, smiled and kindly sent him home to recover.

The deputy wasn’t the only one to escape a tight spot intact. Across our county we saw devastation but no deaths. Even the injuries were minimal. Daylight finally gave us a chance to assess the situation in full, and what we saw was jaw dropping. An entire community on the western portion of the county wasn’t just damaged; it was demolished. A locally famous dinner riverboat was sunk. A lake was caked with debris. A boat was in what used to be someone’s living room. Random walls were about the only things left upright of entire buildings. Vehicles were scrambled, tossed and rolled. Sheet metal plastered to trees looked like botched attempts to wrap the branches with Reynolds Wrap foil.

From the air, it looked like a lawn mower had cut a strip right through the heart of a city. A mobile home park populated by retirees had been turned into a scrap metal yard. I took reporters on a tour of the hardest hit areas late in the afternoon and saw not just the destruction up close, but the jumbled lives. As the reporters watched dazed people pick through their ravaged homes, they heard riveting tales of pure luck and survival. A string of single story apartments had been ripped open, exposing people’s lives to the anyone who walked by. Military posters still hung from a lone section of standing wall, while all around was a gumbo of clothes, bedding and toys. It was obvious that the people who called this now naked square their home were simply at a loss. They had trouble sorting through their possessions, trying to determine what to throw into the bed of a pickup truck and what to leave behind. One woman just walked back and forth while clutching a pillow. A man saw my sheriff’s office shirt and asked me to pass along to the sheriff his sincere appreciation for all the help deputies provided throughout the day. Another woman asked whether there would be a curfew and where she could get some food. Everyone we went, people asked about what was happening elsewhere. With the power out and TVs destroyed, these victims were cut off from all news. They knew very little about what the night and beyond would be like. Once the initial flurry of rescue activity was gone, would other help be on the way?

One boy, probably no more than 10, waved at our bus driver because he recognized him as the dad of one of his schoolmates. The bus driver was obviously thrown into a bit of emotional turmoil as a familiar face was suddenly attached to the catastrophe. The boy’s mother appeared a moment later, and a new line of strain could be seen on her face. Maybe she felt a trickle of embarrassment at realizing that her life was laid bare to someone she knew, but only in passing. She said a hollow hello and then turned back to her work.

The politicians swooped in, told the TV cameras that help was on the way and then sped off to the next stop. Reporters scattered in search of the countless different angles such a big overall story spawns.

Support poured in. A call went out for four-wheel-drive vehicles, and in no time a parade of them was lined up ready for duty. People offered to host displaced families in their spare rooms. I drove down the street and saw members of the local VFW working an intersection for tornado relief donations. Church groups were mobilized to clear trees and cover roofs. No one was idle.