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Homes Damaged, Power Out After Tornado In Eustis

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Residents say a tornado flipped this RV, toppled trees and ripped the roofs off homes late Thursday night.

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By NEIL JOHNSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 21, 2007

Updated: 09/21/2007 04:21 pm

Storm Photos | Video: Aftermath

EUSTIS - It was over in maybe 30 seconds.

A tornado with winds estimated at 105 mph tore through a neighborhood in this Central Florida lakeshore town in less than a minute Thursday night, damaging about 50 houses, leaving 20 uninhabitable.

Daniel Hartman had been using television and the Internet to track the series of powerful thunderstorms that moved across nearby Leesburg and Mount Dora minutes before 11 p.m. Then he saw the funnel cloud and flash of exploding electrical transformers.

"I watched it pop up over Lake Apopka. In 30 seconds it was on top of us and gone," he said while clearing the waist-thick branches of an oak tree twisted in half next to the house he shares with his father, Charles.

"There was a roar. We heard debris pounding," Daniel Hartman said.

What he didn't hear were the tree limbs crashing on the roof of his home.

The line of storms spawned by an area of low pressure in the Gulf of Mexico tracked across Central Florida for about an hour, covering roughly 30 miles as people sent reports of funnel clouds to the National Weather Service and law enforcement.

The weather service sent investigators from its Melbourne office to inspect the damage to determine whether the winds that ripped through the roughly 10-block area came from thunderstorms or a tornado.

That inspection showed a tornado did touch down in Eustis, which is about 78 miles northeast of Tampa.

Winds of 105 mph would make the tornado at the high end of the EF-1 in the five-level Enhanced Fujita scale. That was no surprise from what Dennis Decker, warning coordination meteorologist in the Melbourne weather, office saw on radar.

"We were seeing very classic tornado signatures on radar," Decker said.

All of Lake County was under a tornado warning when the storm struck.

Lake County Sheriff Gary Borders said there were no serious injuries. One person was treated at a hospital and released with minor cuts. The American Red Cross opened a shelter but closed it today after only one person showed up.

The tornado left about 300 homes without power. Borders said utility officials believed power would be returned to those homes in condition to have electricity by tonight or possibly early Saturday.

There was no financial estimate of damages.

At least one home had its roof ripped off. Tree limbs crushed several cars. Much of the damage residents worked to clear came from trees and small outbuildings shredded by the wind.

In the neighborhood of old homes today, there was the familiar Florida chainsaw serenade as residents trimmed fallen limbs and hauled vegetation to the curb. The metal sides of an outdoor shed were thrown into a tree, and pink insulation littered lawns.

Judy Johnson spent the storm hiding in her bathroom awed by the sound.

"It was the kind of noise that made you take shelter," she said.

Reporter Neil Johnson can be reached at (813) 259-7731 or njohnson@tampatrib.com.

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