El Niño fuels tornadoes in Florida

Rescue workers used bloodhounds to look for bodies in rubble-strewn neighborhoods.

"Debris is piled up so bad, it may take a while to find any survivors," said Doug Braswell, a spokesperson for the Seminole County Public Safety Department.

A pickup truck ended up on its nose inside a wrecked living room and retirees lost nearly everything they had, but the six to 10 twisters missed Walt Disney World and the two other major theme parks in the Orlando area.

Curfews were set for dusk in the hardest-hit areas. More than 250 people were injured, including a 16-year-old girl who was blown 150 feet out of a window into a pasture.

David Myers had a broken foot after being hurled against a wall.

"I'm just lucky to be alive. I've been thrown off of horses and out of airboats, but that's the hardest I've ever been slammed," he said.

The pink playhouse he built for his 6-year-old daughter, Brittany, lay in a pile amid the shattered glass of a bedroom window. Brittany was sent to stay with relatives while Myers and his wife and brothers cleaned up.

El Niño-fueled thunderstorms storms blew in off the Gulf of Mexico just before midnight Sunday, spitting out tornadoes from the Tampa Bay area on the Gulf to Daytona Beach on the Atlantic Coast. Georgia also was affected, with floods closing roads and schools yesterday after as much as 5 inches of rain fell Sunday.

In this retirement haven for thousands from the Midwest and Northeast, Josie Wolfe searched for her medicine amid the scraps of wood, metal paneling and pink insulation that remained of her mobile home.

"It's all gone," cried Wolfe, who moved from Dayton, Ohio, in 1983 with her husband, Ned. "This was our whole life. I'm 73 years old and you can't start over at 73. What good is it? You work so hard and now there's nothing. I wish it would've killed me."

She and her husband both escaped unharmed. She eventually found her medicine, along with her wallet containing $4 she won at Bingo earlier that night.

One man was holding his 18-month-old baby in his arms in his mobile home near Kissimmee, about 15 miles south of Orlando, when a tornado roared through before dawn.

"The baby was in the father's arms, and it got sucked out into the tornado," said Osceola County Fire Chief Jeff Hall. The boy's body was found by late afternoon.

It was the deadliest round of tornadoes in Florida since the National Weather Service started keeping detailed records a half-century ago. And it was the state's most deadly day since Hurricane Andrew struck in 1992, killing at least 32 people in Florida, Louisiana and the Bahamas.

"The level of devastation I saw here is equal to Hurricane Andrew, even if in a more narrow area," said Jeff Hall, fire chief in Osceola County.

Some of the tornadoes may have had wind speeds as high as 210 mph, said Bob Ebaugh of the weather service.

More than 135,000 people in central Florida lost power at the height of the storms.

President Clinton sent representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, including director James Lee Witt, and said he would tour the state tomorrow to survey damage.

FEMA granted the state's request that 14 central Florida counties receive disaster assistance.

National Guard units were on standby. No troops were deployed yesterday.

The weather service said the destruction was caused by six to 10 twisters.

"To have that number of strong and violent tornadoes concentrated in a small geographical area is unprecedented for Florida. It is a historical event. It's of that caliber," meteorologist Dave Sharp said.

Near Kissimmee, the Ponderosa Park tourist campground was unusually full because the annual Silver Spurs Rodeo had wrapped up Sunday and spring training for baseball's Houston Astros was just getting under way.

Eight people were killed in the park, including a man whose body was blown onto the Florida Turnpike.

02-24-98