Umatilla bears brunt of Irma in Lake
Teddy Spann didn’t have time to worry about Hurricane Irma. Not with what he was sure was a tornado tearing up his house.
“We didn’t have much time to react,” he said Monday as he wielded a chainsaw on a log-size branch in the front yard of his Umatilla home. “Unreal.”
The winds arrived Sunday night before Irma’s full impact, upending carports and boats, tearing roofs off homes and sending tree limbs flying. A tree crashed through the roof of Spann’s home, where he was holed up with family and friends. Lake County Sheriff Peyton Grinnell called the damage from both the twister and Irma “total devastation.”
For Lake County, Irma created a giant mess — and those without generators were cleaning up without the benefit of going back into a home with AC. Officials reported 123,306 outages across Lake. Trees are down all over the county, blocking both main roads and neighborhood streets.
Grinnell said he was unaware of any deaths related to Irma.
“We’re aware there’s a mess. We’re just asking people to be patient,” he said. “This is going to be a long-term recovery. The damage assessments are still coming in … It’s still much too early to tell what the cost will be in the end.”
County officials feared the worst for residents living in manufactured or mobile homes and urged them to take refuge in one of the county’s 14 shelters. Many did. Others fled to cinderblock community centers.
But some, like Buck Beam, 74, of the Holiday Mobile Home Park in Tavares, stood their ground.
“Never even thought of leaving,” he said Monday, wearing a neck brace and leaning on a cane.
Melody Lowe, 63, who owns a trailer in the same park, also rode out the storm in her mobile home.
“When it first started blowing, it moved the house. It shook a little … I thought it’s not gonna make it,” she said of her aluminum mobile home. “But it did good.”
Her carport did not. Chained to the ground, it was a mangled mess, and the canopy disappeared in the wind.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I don’t mind you putting it on the ground, just don’t let it hurt anybody.’”
In Mount Dora, Cedric Lomax, 56, was out early Monday toting branches into neat piles across from his house on North Tremain Street.
“We had a whole lot in the front, we had a whole lot in the side, and the back gates are broke out,” he said. “We’re just trying to get all the big stuff.”
Umatilla was hit especially hard, Grinnell said while surveying damage to the Umatilla Inn and Restaurant on State Road 19. The roof was torn off, but no one was inside at the time. Elsewhere in the small city, boats in side yards were flipped, roads were covered in debris — and there was that tree at Spann’s house.
He said his family ran to a closet inside the house. Not everyone made it into the closet before the tree came down, but they all survived with no injuries.
Spann said he was prepared, designating a safe spot for the hurricane for five people and five dogs.
“We were sitting in the living room all talking, heard the alarm on the phones, looked out the window, peeked out the door and ran,” he said. “We started scrambling.”
Flying insulation slapped him across the face.
“Didn’t even get to the safe spot,” Spann said. “I don’t think there was a safe spot.”
However, he saw a bright side in the storm that ripped up his yard, flipped his boat and wrecked his home.
“It could have been worse, a lot worse,” Spann said. “My grandson was here. My son was here … .”
He plans to rebuild the place he bought two years ago: “It’ll be beautiful again, but with a lot less trees.”