Deadly Storms Leave Trail of Ruin in Florida

Governor Declares Emergency After 19 Die, Hundreds of Homes Damaged

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Deadly Storms Sweep Through Florida
Storms carrying what was believed to be the state's deadliest tornado in a decade cut a path across central Florida, killing at least 14 people, damaging hundreds of homes and littering fields with clothes, furniture and splintered lumber.

PAISLEY, Fla. Feb. 2 -- As the family's double-wide began to vibrate amid an unearthly roar of wind, a mother gathered her three children around her on the floor, tried to hush the baby and cast a blanket across them all.

"I said to myself, 'God, just save my kids,' " said Jean Rohrer, 31, a Wal-Mart clerk, who said she lay across her 4-month-old son so he wouldn't blow away. "Then we heard a whoosh and the roof came flying off. And then the walls blew away."

Fifteen minutes later, there was nothing left upright. All of the family's belongings -- clothes, furniture, toys -- were strewn amid splintered two-by-fours, overturned pickups and other debris along Cooter Pond Road, a dirt lane in an area now dotted with the wreckage of mobile homes.

The family would soon recognize how lucky they had been, relatively speaking.

Of the 19 people confirmed to have been killed by powerful storms and at least one tornado in central Florida before dawn this morning, 13 came from this rural outpost around Lake Mack and Paisley, Lake County emergency officials said.

While the storms' damage was most intense in isolated patches, there was widespread damage across central Florida, and Gov. Charlie Crist (R) declared a state of emergency in Lake, Seminole, Sumter and Volusia counties.

More than 20,000 homes and businesses were without electricity, and hundreds of homes, many of them trailers, suffered some damage. More than 30,000 homes in Lake County -- roughly one-fourth of the housing -- are trailers, according to the 2000 census, and the structures typically fare poorly in high winds.

"It looked like a bomb went off on some of these homes, and it breaks your heart to see that," Crist told reporters.

In the unfortunate pockets of disaster, many residents seemed dazed, almost giddy.

Rohrer and her family crawled from the wreckage in the dark about 3:30 a.m., and it quickly became clear that, though they had lost nearly all their possessions, they had fared far better than some of their neighbors.

Her next-door neighbor was calling for her husband and their 6-year-old son. "Billy? Jacob?" the woman yelled, but the two were later found dead, Rohrer said.

Rohrer heard another neighbor screaming, "Help . . . someone help me," but the woman died before help could arrive. A neighborhood boy had broken his arm, and the bone was showing.