In front of Susan Stepp’s house, a camper van lies on its side. Toppled by surprise by tornadoes in Fort Pierce, a city on Florida’s east coast, even before Hurricane Milton made landfall more than 120 miles away.
“It was just horrible. I heard some pretty terrible things,” says this septuagenarian, looking sorry, referring to the people who died.
“The tornado lifted our 22-ton camper van and threw it across the lawn,” explains her husband Bill, 72, “completely stunned” by the power of the waterspout.
Already hit by Hurricane Helene, Florida was swept by Milton from west to east after making landfall Wednesday evening. At least ten people lost their lives.
If the “worst-case scenario” was avoided, according to the authorities, a series of tornadoes and unexpected floods surprised residents.
The outer bands of a hurricane “are known as places where tornadoes form”, explains Jana Houser, an academic specializing in this phenomenon, to AFP.
Due to climate change, the increasingly warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico have supplied Milton “with more fuel,” she adds.
– “It looks like a train coming” –
Further north, in Cocoa Beach, a tornado blew out the windows of a hair salon and blew the roof off a bank. But no victims to deplore on this narrow strip of coastal land.
Katherine and Larry Hingle said they were sitting outside their apartment watching the river rise Wednesday when the waterspout hit.
“I said, ‘It looks like a train coming,'” Katherine Hingle, 53, told AFP as she walked her dog to assess the damage.
Her husband, Larry Hingle, 52, said the wind changed direction “rapidly and violently.” “We had seen warnings on TV but it’s rare to see a tornado in Cocoa Beach. It was pretty crazy,” he said.
The noise was “surreal” says Katherine Hingle, her husband describing it as “cracking metal”.
And then “calm settled for a long time,” Katherine Hingle still remembers. Then the hurricane really arrived. “All night long, there were power outages” and this “constant, screeching wind,” adds Larry.
Not far away, an octogenarian who did not wish to give his name examines the damage in the parking lot of a residence. A torn part of the roof caused the windshield of one vehicle to shatter and the roof of another.
“I have seen a lot of storms but this one was the worst,” confides this resident, who also mentions the sound of a “passing train”.
– “Finding yourself with nothing” –
On the west coast of Florida, Lidier Rodriguez and Sandra Escalona are exhausted. Thursday morning, they say, water began flooding their apartment in Clearwater. The couple had to take refuge upstairs, from where they observed the emergency services deployed on boats to help other residents evacuate.
“Everything is ruined,” notes Lidier Rodriguez, who has lived in Florida for two decades. “But at least we’re alive. That’s all we have left.”
Dozens of residents emerge from their homes, visibly dazed, carrying a few belongings in bags and their pets in their arms.
No one expected such flooding in a neighborhood that was not part of the mandatory evacuation zone and had previously not been damaged by Hélène.
When Sandra Escalona saw water leaking into her apartment, she thought a neighbor had left a faucet running. Before you worry.
“Everything happened very quickly. The water came suddenly and very hard,” she remembers. “We ran to get some papers, the dog and we went out the door. We spent the night in front of the neighbor’s door above.”
Today, she and her husband say they are lost, with, says the latter, “the impression of having everything and suddenly finding themselves with nothing.” “We don’t know where to go.”
