Victor Linero was watching news coverage of Hurricane Milton moving toward Florida when he suddenly saw live video of a tornado near his grandfather’s house — the hurricane was hitting the other side of the state. It was a few hours ago.
In a panic, Linero called his grandfather to warn him that he needed to evacuate.
Linero, 26, who was raised by his grandfather, recalls, “I was screaming, “Papi, evacuate quickly!”” “Then you start hearing, ‘Oh my God!’ Oh my God!”
I heard my grandfather, Alejandro Alonso, 66, scream for the last time. Then the person on the other end of the phone went silent.
By the time it was over, what appeared to be two tornadoes had struck Spanish Lakes Country Club Village, a retirement community north of Fort Pierce where Mr. Alonso lived. They destroyed mobile homes, tossed trucks aside and downed trees while Hurricane Milton loomed nearly 320 miles away in the Gulf of Mexico.
In the end, Alonso, his 70-year-old girlfriend, and four other people were killed. All approximately 125 homes were destroyed. All of them were mobile homes. That was one of the most perplexing ironies of Hurricane Milton. That means more people died during the storm than anywhere else on the opposite coast of the coast that was hit by the hurricane.
Anita Perrotta, who lives in the area with her husband, said the couple hid in their Spanish Lakes home as the tornado threw debris.
“When the actual hurricane hit later, we didn’t really suffer any damage,” she said. “All the damage was caused by these tornadoes.”
It’s not uncommon for hurricanes to spawn tornadoes when they make landfall in the outer belt, but the number and strength of Wednesday’s tornadoes surprised many. They occurred hours before hurricane-force winds were expected to arrive, forcing residents to rush into their homes, gas stations, hotel lobbies and wherever they could for a last-minute evacuation.
In the storm’s aftermath, residents said they expected Milton’s worst effects to be on the other side of the state, where the storm rolls in from the Gulf of Mexico.
In Spanish Lakes, where both snowbirds and full-timers live typical Florida retirements, playing bocce ball and bingo, residents were not immune to warnings of impending storms, even on the Atlantic coast. The community’s 1,285 homes are a mix of newer storm-resistant concrete homes and more vulnerable mobile homes.
Residents had been closely monitoring the path of Hurricane Milton for days. But the worst of the wind and rain seemed destined to hit elsewhere.
As tornadoes began swirling across the state well ahead of the hurricane’s path, panicked families began checking on relatives in Spanish Lakes.
Mr. Alonso was one of those most at risk because he lived in a mobile home. He moved here after serving in the U.S. Army and working at the post office for more than 30 years. He lived there with his motorcycle, two dogs (one a rottweiler with tattoos), and his girlfriend, Mary Grace Viramontes.
Viramontes spent most of her life working as a social worker in southwest Detroit, helping young people facing homelessness and other challenges, said her son Adam Torres.
Linero said he believes the tornado he saw on live video was the same one that struck his grandfather’s area shortly afterward. When he heard his grandfather’s screams, he already felt in his heart that he would not survive.
He got in his car and drove 45 miles down Interstate 95 to Spanish Lakes. When he found his grandfather’s trailer, it wasn’t the place he remembered. The tornado swept it 100 feet away, leaving only the foundation.
“I knew he was gone, but I needed to say goodbye,” Linero said. “I wanted to be there for him because that’s what he meant to me.”
Victims at the retirement community include Debbie Kennedy, 66, a retired nursing home manager who moved there from upstate New York in March after the death of her husband. It’s here. Credit… Brandi Smith
Alonso and Viramontes were not the only casualties that day.
Brandi Smith said she spoke early Wednesday with her mother, Debbie Kennedy, 66, a retired nursing home manager who moved to Spanish Lakes from upstate New York in March. Ta.
The mother said she was confident she would be safe in the mobile home. She told her daughter that if the situation worsened, she would know where to go. A school several miles away had become an evacuation center.
“But we were still a few hours into the storm,” Smith said. “There was nothing to worry about.”
Suddenly, she realized that the text messages she had been sending to her mother were no longer receiving them. She started searching for information online and connected with dozens of people. Someone went to a nearby hospital and offered to show the staff a photo of her mother.
Rescuers found Kennedy’s body in the neighborhood Thursday morning.
Smith said her mother was a loving mother and grandmother known for her extravagant Halloween decorations in the small town of Union Springs, New York. And she always told her daughter that she wanted to be buried next to her husband, who died in 2021, and joked that it would haunt her unless that happened.
Since Kennedy’s death, her daughter’s main focus has been getting her mother home for burial.
Spanish Lakes Community Manager John Brennan said the mobile homes destroyed represent about 10 percent of the homes in the community. But some people living in stronger concrete buildings said they feared for their lives as the tornado passed through.
“It was very scary,” Pat Pinet, 70, said of how the walls of her home began to vibrate as the tornado approached. “I thought the cement block wall was going to collapse.”
Pinet said the tornado sounded like a freight train and kept getting louder until she and her husband decided it was time to go to the laundry room. But the tornado soon passed through their street. I didn’t even have time to close the laundry room door before I was done.
She said her husband’s aunt was knocked down by the tornado’s winds, and a recent surgery ruptured the wound. And one of his cousins, Frank Gormley, was sitting in his recliner at home when the tornado nearly blew his home away.
“The next thing he knew, he was lying on someone’s roof,” said Gormley’s brother Joe.
“My neighbors said they would take pictures of the house to show me if there was any debris, but there’s not even any debris left,” Joe Gormley said. “Some of these houses were lifted up and turned on their sides. Some had their walls blown off, some had their roofs blown off. He was completely gone.”
Frank Gormley was still in the hospital Friday afternoon, awaiting surgery on his hand, but his injuries were otherwise non-serious. “He is badly bruised and there are concerns about blood clots,” his brother said.
After the tornado passed, a lengthy search and rescue operation began. Officers went from house to house, spray-painting large red “X” marks on houses they had already cleared. Not all victims have been made public.
The scale of the destruction in retirement communities left some in the dark about the fate of their families for more than a day.
Kelly King-Wolfkeil spent all Thursday searching for her 84-year-old mother, Sandra McDonald, who lived on Montoya Way, one of the hardest-hit streets in the neighborhood. Finally, on Thursday evening, she received the news that her mother had not survived.
Like many people left behind after the storm, her grief was mixed with disbelief. “Nobody knew something like this would happen,” she said.
Annie Correal contributed reporting and Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
