[islandgal]

Any personal experience stories anyone would like to share about the Feb. 2nd Tornado?

[ripwho]

I'll start even though I dont even live in TV yet.. I have a ex-work colleague who lives in Winnifred... She slept right thru it. It must have been thru quick? It must have been very 'spotted'? I look forward to more replies!

[villager99]

winifred is north of the 3 mile wide path the tornado took thru the villages from poinciiana to carolina.
it was a stormy night everywhere in the villages area but not all of us were in the tornado's path.

[marygalexa]

We were in the middle of it. Every one of our 66 concrete courtyard villas were damaged badly enough we all had to move out for restoration. We personally were out 13 weeks. Some were less and some more.

The storm as you probably know came in the middle of the night (3:15 AM to our area). I had indulged in a sleeping pill that night about 2 hours earlier and was sleeping very soundly. My husband, however is very sensitive to storms and lightening and it woke him up. He suggested we should go to the bathroom (no windows) and I just turned over and went back to sleep. But then I heard what I thought was hail. I asked my husband, "Is it hailing?" and he said, "NO, things are hitting our house." He dragged me into the bathroom seconds before our bedroom window exploded and glass and debris went flying everywhere. My bed was covered with glass and I don't mean it was just laying there - it was in large shards sticking into the mattress and the pillows. Guess I owe hubby one!!

There were many miracles that night because with the intensity of that storm, if it were not for what I believe "a herd of angels taking care of us" and very good construction, there would have been more than a few deaths in the villages.

One of my neighbors is writing a book if anyone is interested. It is entitled 10 Seconds Inside Of A Tornado. He is using a lot of our individual stories. His email is efrederick@earthlink.net. There are also a few of the tornado stories on the Mallory Square website at http://www.mallorysquaresocial-lites.com/tornado.htm

I give a great deal of credit to the Villages for their help in preventing looting and helping with the clean-up. I can tell all of you thinking about moving to the Villages. We aren't exempt from bad weather and disasters but if I am going to live through a disaster - I want to live in the Villages when it happens to me. The support and caring from both the Builders and the neighbors beats anything I have ever seen and I've been through 5 hurricanes and a couple of tornadoes.

[golfnut]

Mary, I imagine then you heard "the freight train"?

[marygalexa]

No golfnut, it didn't sound like a "freight train" to me. It was more like a jet plane and then a huge explosion when it hit.

[nhsnowbird]

We were renting in Sunset Pointe and it was our first night there. My husband heard "the freight train". He woke me and encouraged me to go into the master bedroom closet. The next day we went walking in the neighborhood and I could not believe the devastation. However, TV pulled together and began the cleanup work immediately. After this experience, I would say TV is the place to be in any type of disaster. The people just all pulled together.