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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – It was a Christmas Eve for hundreds of East Florida families who did not wake up after the thunderstorms on Thursday night, leaving behind scattered trees and lightning curtains and damaging people’s property.
Neighbors were taking over the area around them and picking up early pieces early Friday morning as utility crews assessed the damage and worked to restore power to homes and businesses affected by the outage in Jacksonville and surrounding counties.
Some of the most significant damage can be found in the Walk sub-section of Nature in the Mandarin neighborhood, where a tree fell from the roof of the house. The homeowner, Rick Blair, said he was inside when the wind blew, and sent him wandering around crying in search of cover.
Related: Reports of damage and power outages following storms on Christmas Eve
“It felt like a tornado,” he recalls. “So, I went to the bathtub. Then it felt like he was dead. I came out and at the same time I was coming out, my neighbors came out to find out what was going on and we saw it. “
By that, Blair meant a huge tree trunk resting comfortably on its roof. He said the wind was so strong, he never heard a collision. Luckily for him, there was minimal damage as the bouncing trees began to rest on the support beams, absorbing the impact of the impact.
His home was not the only accident. Far away, another tree fell on the RV, though there was no one inside. Reports of damage spread throughout the area as the storms cleared were filtered in the News4Jacks newsroom, including a video clip that caught fire like a transformer along Clare Lane.
Throughout the Deansmore neighborhood, strong winds blew Deborah Dempsey’s rear patio, knocked her over a nearby fence, and raised her to the top of her neighbor’s chimney. His home was one of at least three in the Turbo Falls subdivision with visible hurricane damage.
Damage from a storm in the Deansmore neighborhood.
Dempsey told News4Jacks that all the hell was gone when she was preparing dinner for her family. Thanks to her no one was hurt.
“We heard this whistle,” he said. “And after a while the glass and everything was scattered and the water came from here and it cut everything from there. We don’t know if it’s over or whether it’s because everything happened so quickly. ”
Residents of far-flung, Columbia County also felt the rage of the storms. Jerry Norenberg was preparing to sit down to dinner with his roommates in Lake City when his Christmas Eve dinner was interrupted by what sounded like a driving vehicle in his home. It was not a car but a tree.
“I took a step out of the kitchen and the next thing you know it sounded like a car coming out of the house.” “It shook me and I turned around and I saw a tree turn out of our house.”
Nor Reinberg said he and his roommates had to leave immediately. They defended what they could but did not explain what they would do next until they made plans to stay with friends.
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