How are all the FL teams doing after all those 5 tornado’s doing, I understand that it might be hard for some of them to post on here with widespread power outages and such.
As far as I know, there haven’t been any FIRST teams affected (that I know of yet). Last I heard though, the death toll is 19, with more people still missing.
Early morning is the worst time for a tornado to hit, because most people are asleep and caught completely by surprise. Even though warnings were out there about 10-20 minutes in advance, many people weren’t even aware that a storm was coming. This storm hit several trailer parks (a terrible place to be in a storm) and retirement communities. The news isn’t good.
In fact, this storm could potentially displace the deadliest tornado in Florida history, which killed 25 in 1998. If not, it will certainly take its place as one of Florida’s most deadly tornadoes.
1065 is safe. We didn’t have any tornadoes in our county even though they almost had a touch down in St. Cloud (home of 1390) which is literally…down the street from my team. There was a lot of water damage, and a lot of car accidents but that was expected with the blinding rains.
To any teams affected by this unfortunate event my heart goes out to you.
Its great to see that all of you are ok but it is sad that there are 19 deaths and countless injuries and losses of homes and businesses.
Please keep us all updated on other teams if you know about them so if something did happen to someone in the FIRST community they could get some help.
This is true, and tornados aren’t new to Florida either, however it wasn’t the count it was more the magnitude. Also the location. Often when those tornadoes hit they are in farm lands where agriculture is devestated. Turn on the news and you’ll see the absolute devistation to the area.
Also, most of Florida only prepares for this kind of carnage during a hurricane season so there are is not much in the way to prepare people for these kinds of spontaneous incidents. I don’t know a single person who has a tornado bunker/cellar. Having struck in the middle of the night while no one was watching tv or listening to radio, with no “sirens” as warnings, these came without people ever having a clue what was going on.
There may not be as many tornados as in tornado ally, but the lifes taken and devestation is nothing to scoff at/compare to.
Everyone, please think of the big picture before you post. Just because my area wasn’t severely hit, that is not a time to mock the situation. This was a disaster that claimed at least 19 human lives. Each one of those people have family, have friends, all that will miss them dearly. There may have been grander scale disasters in history in other places, but to each one of those family members of the victims claimed last night, this is life altering. My thoughts and prayers go out to these friends, families, the community, and to all of those still missing. I wish the best in this difficult time to our neighbor Floridians.