Lady Lake, Fla. – Search efforts resumed amid fresh rain Saturday across a swath of central Florida devastated by tornado-bearing thunderstorms that killed at least 20 people, including a high school girl struck by a tree as she lay in bed.
President Bush declared four counties disaster areas, freeing federal aid for recovery from the storms that struck Friday, spawning at least one tornado that ripped roofs and walls off single family homes and threw mobile homes off their foundations.
The twister hit between 3 and 4 a.m., when few people were awake to hear the tornado warnings broadcast just minutes in advance. Few communities in the region have warning sirens.
The storms blew a tree into 17-year-old Brittany May’s bedroom, killing her, her stepmother said Saturday.
“We’re all in shock. I’ve lost family members before, and I’ve never had to bury a child,” Lisa May said. “I’m going to speak for her mother, and me and her father: This is the hardest thing that any of us will have to do.”
Gov. Charlie Crist toured the battered areas Saturday in Lady Lake, about 50 miles northwest of Orlando.
“Your heart pours out to the people affected and you want to help,” the governor said.
“People say it sounds like a freight train. To me it sounded like a mountain coming down,” said Denise Anderson, 52, who huddled in a bathtub for shelter with her husband. She spent Saturday morning sweeping up broken glass outside her crumpled mobile home “because I don’t want to clean up inside and face it.”
Thirteen people had been confirmed dead in the Paisley area plus seven in Lady Lake, about 30 miles to the west, emergency officials said. Among the seven identified Saturday were Brittany, five women ranging from 66 to 81 and a 20-year-old man.
State emergency management chief Craig Fugate said determining the exact number of dead could take days, and the priority was finding survivors who may be trapped under rubble.
Rescue workers going house to house searching for survivors found people who watched their homes disintegrate around them.
“The walls just came in on me, and the roof just went straight up,” Lake Mack resident David Demar, 36, said Saturday.
Demar, who lost his mobile home, said he heard rumors that some of his friends were killed. “The hard part is going to find out who’s gone and who’s here,” he said.
The wind picked up one tractor-trailer rig and slammed it down on top of another one. A church built to withstand a Category 4 hurricane was destroyed.
National Guard troops distributed blankets, food and water.
About 1,500 homes and businesses were still without power Saturday, said Buddy Eller, spokesman for Progress Energy Florida, which serves 1.7 million customers. He said he expected power would be fully restored by the end of the day.
James Pietro, 42, was sleeping in his RV when the wind and snapping trees woke him just in time to take cover with his girlfriend beneath their bed.
The RV was lifted into the air and rolled several times, coming to a rest a few feet from a pond, upside down and nearly torn in half. The two came away with only scratches.
“I don’t see how I lived,” Pietro said.
The Volusia County Property Appraisers Office put preliminary damage estimate at $80 million and said as many as 500 properties were damaged.
It was the second-deadliest tornado in state history, behind five twisters in February 1998 that killed 42 people in central Florida and damaged or destroyed about 2,600 homes and businesses.
Jason Pawelczyk, 32, said he and his mother took cover in a closet and emerged seconds later to find half his roof gone.
“We finally made it outside, and all you heard was people screaming for each other,” he said. “It was pouring rain, flashlights everywhere. All you could see was silhouettes, people yelling for each other. It was crazy.”
Associated Press writers Curt Anderson, Damian Grass, Suzette Laboy and Adrian Sainz in Miami, Stephen Majors in Tallahassee and Ron Word, Mike Schneider and Brian Skoloff in Lake County contributed to this report.
