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Tuesday, 06 February 2007 00:00

Relief

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Mobile home communities were the hardest hit by the severe weather crossed North Central Florida last week – killing twenty people.

Victor Hill of the Golden Gate Fire District witnessed the damage from Hurricane Charley and Wilma …but that didn’t prepare for him for carnage wrought by the three tornadoes that touched down Thursday night and early Friday morning.

“the things that are striking here are the mobile homes, where you don’t know where the mobile home was and the only thing you see is the foundation that’s carved into the ground or the remnants of it, or a resident telling you about the mobile home that’s gone that ended up a few hundred feet from it was originally at and you go to look at it and its wrapped around a tree.”

Hill says some conventional structures were destroyed too…but not nearly in the numbers of manufactured and mobile homes. But he says the power is back-on and people who still have houses and businesses are getting on with their lives.

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Relief efforts continue in North Central Florida where severe weather and tornadoes last week killed twenty people and destroyed more than a thousand homes. Public Information Officer for the Golden Gate Fire District, Victor Hill, was deployed to the area. He says mobile homes were the hardest hit.

“in the lake mac area a lot of these places have been around since the early 80’s before a lot of the codes were updated so you’re seeing a lot of early model homes and in some cases a path of destruction in some cases a half mile wide that cut a swath through these things and decimated these neighborhoods. there are several cases were these mobile homes are just thousands of pieces of several mobile homes just scattered all over.”

Hill says the power is back and on this Monday many people returned to work. Meanwhile FEMA has set up shop near Lady Lake – one of the hardest hit areas. Its employees are helping the homeless find temporary shelter.