The warnings were sent out hours before daybreak on Friday, February 2. Storms, including at least three tornadoes, swept across four counties in central Florida. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) a total of 20 fatalities occurred within Lake County, but storm damage and power outages were prevalent from Lady Lake to New Smyrna Beach (Volusia County)—a distance of more than 70 miles.

Warning periods of eight to 16 minutes gave residents in the area a chance to protect themselves, but in this worst-case situation few were watching TV or listening to radios between 3 and 4 a.m. and, according to several newspaper accounts, few communities here have warning sirens.

NOAA’s post-storm surveys reported the first tornado reached peak intensity with winds of 155 to 160 mph; the second with wind speeds between 160 and 165 mph; and a third with wind speeds of 100 to 105 mph. In effect, these are Category 2 through 5 hurricane winds that can drag across the ground for miles or can skip from street to street and even house to house.

In the most recent past attention has been given to hurricanes—and for good reason. But tornadoes can present a much scarier scenario: difficult to predict, developing quickly, following haphazard paths, and yet carrying the same deadly and destructive force as hurricanes much larger in size. Seeing photos and reading accounts of residents in the storms’ aftermath one might easily have thought a hurricane had ravaged the area. Roofs were ripped off and homes were off their foundations. Florida’s Gov. Charlie Crist was quoted as saying, “It looks like a bomb went off on some of these homes.”

The state of Florida has done, arguably, the best job in the country in protecting its residents from storms through updated building codes and the creation of high-velocity wind zones that demand hurricane protection. The storms of February 2, however, clearly point out that people don’t have to live in a coastal area to be affected by hurricane-force winds, that they will not always get 24-hour notice and that there are many things they can do to protect their homes—and, therefore, themselves—from roofs to foundations and everything in between.

In trying to make something good out of these horrible storms, let’s hope that more states and more communities as far inland as Oklahoma and Missouri heed the need to protect residents through better building with storm protection in mind.

Howard Shingle

Howard Shingle EDITOR

Kerri Caldwell PUBLISHER