Tornadoes whip up plenty of drama Property damaged, lights go out, but no injuries reported
Folks will enjoy light winds and sunny skies Wednesday as they continue cleaning up after a second set of tornadoes in three weeks struck South Florida.
The tornadoes — one touching down at 7:15 a.m. Tuesday in Pompano Beach, the other landing about 45 minutes later in northeast MiamiDade County — both had swaths of about three miles and winds of up to 95 mph, the National Weather Service in Miami said.
The tornadoes caused power outages, delayed cruise ships, brought down trees and halted commuter traffic. No injuries were reported.
The Jan. 27 tornado’s 100 mph winds scrubbed two miles between Coconut Creek and Pompano Beach, leaving three with minor injuries and damaging dozens of cars. The twister that happened Jan. 28 in Palm Beach County also damaged property.
Those storms and Tuesday’s tornadoes, while disruptive and likely to
prompt many insurance claims, did not cause enough damage for county governments to declare disaster areas, officials said.
But the recent storms left unbelievable stories in their wakes.
Catamaran flips
The Jan. 27 tornado lifted an SUV from the southbound lanes of Florida’s Turnpike near the Coconut Creek Parkway exit and placed it on the northbound side, leaving the driver heavily bruised and with a broken finger.
On Tuesday morning in Fort Lauderdale, a man sleeping in a 12,000-pound catamaran avoided drowning after winds flipped his boat upside down in a lake.
Thousands of utility customers lost their electricity Tuesday. At 11 a.m., Florida Power & Light reported power outages attributed to the storm in three counties: 12,306 customers in Broward County; 550 in Palm Beach and 10,468 in Miami-Dade County were without lights.
“The numbers have been going down as we’ve had crews, some from the west coast and from north of Palm Beach County, trying to restore service as safely and quickly as possible,” spokesman Bill Orloff said.
Outages at two Port Everglades terminals disrupted schedules for two cruise ships. Passengers aboardthe arriving Celebrity Constellation could not go ashore right away. The ship’s departure on a new cruisewas held up by about 90 minutes until generators were used, said Maisy Alpert, communications manager.
Pinar del Rio, which sails to theBahamas, was also delayed. There were no reports of cargo ships being affectedby the loss ofpower, Alpert said.
“Even though the Constellation had a delayed departure, they’ll make up the time at sea,” Alpert said.
The weather service sent survey teams to investigate damage after a line of strong storms moved through the region ahead of a cold front that produced strong gusty winds.
“We’re still in the ElNino pattern that prompted the tornadoes last month,” Meteorologist Chuck Caracozza said. “What it means for us is it produces cooler temperatures and better chances for severe weather likewe sawtoday.”
At noon, the sun was shining from blue skies or through white clouds.
Residents displaced
In North Miami Beach, residents of the 37-unit Riviera Condos at 1000 NE 191st St., were briefly evacuated so thatdamageto theircomplex could be assessed.
“Only two units are considered uninhabitable,” said Curtis Sommerhoff, MiamiDade County’s director of emergency management. “Red Cross was out there to work with those folks in case they didn’t have family or friends to stay with.”
Sommerhoff said the county did not suffer as much damage from the storm as it could have.
“For the most part, it was fortunately not the most populated area of the county,” he said. “If it had come through the airport or Hialeah or the city of Miami, we might have been in worse shape.”
“Obviously therewas a lot of electricity off in the area,” he said. “We phoned all 75 people in our emergency evacuation program and they all had power and did not need assistance.”
An 18-wheeler that flipped on southbound Interstate 95 near the Miami Gardens Drive exit promptedhours-long delays for drivers in both directions. The truck might have been a casualty of the storm, but that wasn’t yet confirmed, Sommerhoff said.
Palm Beach County saw “really minor debris, some lightning strikes,” said Michael Resto, emergency management spokesman. “We received no reports of major damage. The last storm was fairly minor too, with no injuries that I recall.”
Fire and police departments and public works crews in parts of Broward County were very busy, though.
Doug Reaney, 67, said from a Fort Lauderdale fire station that he was “a little wet” after being rescued from Dream Catcher, the flipped catamaran that the retired Navy veteran calls home. “I’ll probably be black and blue one of these days but I’m not hurt in any substantialway.”
He said his sailboat was anchoredinLake Sylvia, just north of the entrance toPort Everglades in an area that is part of the Intracoastal Waterway. It was still dark outside when he was awakened by “a huge noise. I didn’t knowwhat itwas.”
As Reaney looked out of the hatch, “all of a sudden the boat flipped over while I was standing up. Next thing I knew, Iwas laying down in oneof the hullswithawhole bunch of stuff on top of me.”
Water pressure outside the catamaran wouldn’t let him open the door.
“I dug around, found some clothes and had to wait for the boat to fill with water,” Reaney said. “I pushed the door open, swam out from beneath it and the fire departmentwas waiting. They had a diver ready to jump in.”
A fire boat from Fire Station 49 at 1015 Seabreeze Blvd., had received a distress call fromtheU.S. Coast Guard and raced to the upside down catamaran, where Reaney popped up to the surface and a captain pulled him out, Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue Capt. GregMay said.
Reaney’s cellphone, computer and other belongings are all under water with his boat. He was hoping the American Red Cross would find him a temporary home until the Dream Catcher, which he’s had for 11 years, can be lifted from the water with a crane and surveyed for seaworthiness.
“There’s no time to get upset,” Reaney said.
60-year-old tree uprooted
Fort Lauderdale FireRescue said it found power lines down all over the city, manhole covers thatwere blown off and had responded to structure fires and medical calls, May said.
“This was something more significant than a bad thunderstorm,” said May. “There’swrought iron fences that are bent, concrete pilings ripped from the ground, two boats flipped over and 12,000-pound boats snapped from their lines.”
Flamingo Gardens in Davie lost one of its champion trees, a 60-year-old Giant Cluster Fig, the largest inthe country, horticulturist Bryan Tozzie said. Also uprootedwas a mango tree.
“We’re tropical and had some heavy wind gusts and we’ve been so wet [lately], the ground is saturated,” Tozzie said.
Horse trailers tossed
At the Sand and Spurs Equestrian Park in Pompano Beach near the city’s airport, huge old trees were also snapped at their trunks or uprooted.
Anxious owners waited outside the facility’s gates while utility workers shut downpower to prevent anyoneor the horses frombeing injured by fallen lines. A pole with a transformeronit was leaning across Northeast FifthAvenue.
Thewindshadtossed five horse trailers onto their sides as if theywere toys.
“We went through the hurricane [Wilma in 2005],” said Lenny Rubino, who has helped out at the stables for a dozen years. “This ismuch worse.”
He said out of 50 horses kept there, only Elvis, a chestnut barrel racer, was badly hurt.
Elvis had been trapped beneath two tree branches that Rubino cut away. The horsewas left with a gashon his left side that cut perilously close to his lung.
“He would have been gone [had his lung been punctured],” said Janice Sheer, owner of the 17-year-old steed. “He probably got blown into the [stall] door and the hinge went into his side.”
After getting stitched up by a veterinarian, Elvis was standing and eating hay, a sure sign he would be OK, his owner said.
‘Ohmy God, it’s a tornado’
Homeowners who live west of State Road 7 and south of Sheridan Street in Hollywood described hearing an odd sounding wind and seeing the sky darken before their houseswere hit.
Cindy Chachere, at 5635 McKinley St., was preparing for a doctor’s appointment.
“I heard this howling wind and looked out the window and said, ’Oh my God, it’s a tornado,’ and all of a sudden I heard this terrible rumbling noise,” she said.
Residents of the 5600 block of Branch Street also described Tuesday’s weather in frightening terms.
John Skwirz has lived on the street for 20 years and said he has seen big storms before, but Tuesday’s was second only to Hurricane Wilma.
The storm interrupted Miguelina Santos’ morning exercises.
“I haven’t seen anything like that,” Santos said. “There was a loud, like, explosion. I said, ’Oh God, I don’twant to die alone.’ ”