Posted on 02/02/2007 4:52:07 AM PST by Strategerist
LADY LAKE, Florida (CNN) -- Deadly storms swept across central Florida on Friday morning, damaging homes, toppling trees and sending trucks careening off Interstate 4, police said.
The Lake County Sheriff's Office said there were "several" fatalities in Lady Lake, where at least two mobile home parks were hit. Authorities could not say how many deaths there were.
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
A tornado siren sounds like the same siren you would hear in a nuclear attack or the same as were sounded in Baghdad during the initial bombing at the beginning of the war.
It is very nice - I have an aunt and uncle who retired there from Maryland back in September. They were out of town when the storms hit, but they've talked to neighbors and their house is okay.
***
Thank God!
Wierd looking sky this AM. A few rumbles of thunder now in South Brevard. Rain on and off. Most of the bad stuff seems to be to the north of us, the familiar pattern of the I-4 track.
"The Village" TV commercial has gotten heavy airplay in California. Seems to me Arny Palmer and Nancy Lopez were pitching the community.
CNN story here has a few video links showing the aerial damage.
The number of fatalities over the decades from hurricanes and tornados in these parks is appalling.
The subject of dealing with the carnage by the legislature or local county commissions comes up every once in a while, but it's so economically, politically and emotionally charged that proposed legislation goes nowhere.
The seasoned citizen lobby alone keeps the kibosh on trailer park phase-outs. Yet years ago in the famous "no-name storm" in an area just a few miles north of me, several seniors perished from a flash flood in their mobile home park. Others saved themselves by climbing to their roofs and clinging there till rescue came.
I grew up in a "tornado alley" area in a northern Illinois county which never has or will allow mobile home parks. Therefore, there's no fatalities from tornadoes striking retirees and the less well-off. And as a bonus local law enforcement is spared a lot of criminal behavior often carried out in many such trailer residential enclaves.
Leni
It's a lousy way to be reminded what the mobile part of mobile home means.
Fox News now saying 7 dead in Deland, 2 in Lady Lake -- but coroner is saying "Many many more" not reported yet.
Any stick-built house actually built to code and not in a storm surge area and that doesn't have a tree fall on it will nicely survive all but the strongest 1% or so of hurricanes....
Probably will take another 2-3 hurricanes before they seriously look at doing anything about trailer parks in Florida.
Good day to be in the glades!
Agreed; one of the earlier news reports was describing one mobile home park which only had sandy foundations remaining.
And I was just looking at the Villages websites to see if they did have mobile homes also - they appear to have single family homes/villas, at least as advertised.
The problem is there are no basements to hide in.
These people THINK their homes are going to be condemmed because their roofs are gone. But the insurance companies will say otherwise. Count on it.
sw
My aunt and uncle's mobile home in Naples has survived many a hurricane, including Andrew. It has to do with anchoring.
They both have golf courses and clubhouses named after them in The Villages. I know Palmer designed his course there, and I think Lopez designed hers as well.
The whole place has so many golf courses it isn't even funny. The Villages is a huge community - typical development these days where the home pretty much takes up the entire lot, broken up into clusters of communities with their own rec centers and clubhouses, with a couple of planned shopping areas. They have townhomes that start at about $180,000, and the regular homes go for around $250,000 or so all the way up to $1 million plus.
Mostly luck. Naples was nowhere near the strongest winds of Andrew and was missed by Charley as well, and both had very small areas of highest winds.
Prayers up. I've got a couple of friends in The Villages. I'm in Ocala and it looks like we dodged the bullet.
I have a tornado phobia as well, but have never lived anywhere that they occur with any frequency. I'd go back to EQ country first!
Adding my prayers to yours... the more images come out, the worse this looks, and it sounds as if the first report I heard when I woke ("FL thunderstorms kill an unknown number of people"..."significant casualties suspected") is still a possibility. :(
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