Florida's Displaced Storm Victims Take to Shelters

Displaced residents slept in shelters and officials enacted curfews after violent thunderstorms, including at least one tornado, left a swath of central Florida in shambles and killed 19 people or more.

The storms struck with little warning early Friday, spawning a tornado that ripped roofs and walls off single family homes and threw mobile homes off their foundations.

Officials said the twister hit between 3 and 4 a.m., a time when few people were listening to radio or watching TV to hear tornado warnings issued just minutes before the twister struck. Few communities in the region have warning sirens.

Early Saturday, 13 people were confirmed dead in the Paisley area and six in Lady Lake, emergency officials said. The identities of the victims were not being released, but some were reported to be teenagers.

Rescue workers going house to house searching for survivors found people who awoke to the storm's roar and watched their homes disintegrate around them. Residents talked about rescuing neighbors from the rubble and the roar of the storm.

The winds picked up one semi-truck and slammed it down on top of another one. A church built to withstand a Category 4 hurricane was destroyed by the winds.

Gov. Charlie Crist, dealing with his first natural disaster since taking office a month ago, toured the region, calling the devastation "really dramatic" and declared a state of emergency in four counties north of Orlando: Lake, Volusia, Sumter and Seminole.

Crist also asked President Bush to declare a major disaster for Florida as a result of the storms.

The Volusia County Property Appraisers Office put preliminary damage estimate at $80 million and said as many as 500 properties were damaged by the storms.

The 19 deaths made Friday's tornado the second-deadliest in Florida history, surpassing a 1962 tornado that killed 17 in the Panhandle but behind five twisters in February 1998 that killed 42 people in central Florida and damaged or destroyed about 2,600 homes and businesses.

(sources - AP, CNN, Reuters)