A look at the tornado destruction from Hurricane Milton in Wellington and Port St. Lucie. NBC6’s Ari Odzer and Marissa Bagg report.
The tornado spawned by Hurricane Milton bulldozed through central Palm Beach County, blazing a trail of destruction from Wellington to Loxahatchee to Palm Beach Gardens.
Homes destroyed, cars flipped over, and countless trees shredded, even hardy, legacy oak trees.
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Ricardo Johnson stepped outside after it passed and found his car on the roof of his home.
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“The vehicle was parked over here to my left and with the tornado coming through the neighborhood, it ended up on the roof, nose down, and the pressure kind of blew through all the windows,” Johnson said.
There was blue sky visible where his roof should’ve been.
“We just hunkered down in our safe space and fortunately, we’re fine,” Johnson said.
The massive twister smashed everything in its path, leaving witnesses awestruck.
“And I could see a thousand feet into the air, spinning debris, big debris, and it was coming down from the south, and my wife came out and said 'get in here,' and we no sooner got inside, shut the door in our safe room, and it hit, and 30 seconds later it was gone but we knew it was bad,” Dave Darnell said. “It wasn’t like a hurricane where you’ve got, like, a long time of bad stuff, it was fast and furious and it was just a quick roar.”
“And they’re not kidding when they say it sounds like a freight train because that’s exactly what it sounded like,” said Bryan Schultz of Wellington.
He and his girlfriend, Mandy Erhardt, lost everything. Their home’s roof is in pieces and Schultz’s pickup truck is shattered.
“Where am I gonna go today? I have to pack up my stuff and find a place to live,” Erhardt said.
“What am I gonna do? No truck, no place to go,” Schultz added.
Around the corner, there was a house flattened by the storm. 15 people were inside when the tornado hit, and in the aftermath, some of them were combing through the wreckage, looking for their things.
Garrett and Maggie Smith came to their rescue. They live down the street in the rural area. They saw the tornado pass them by, jumped in their car, and looked for people to help.
Garrett joined other neighbors in pulling people out of the rubble, while Maggie drove eight injured victims to the hospital.
“There was at least three people under there,” Maggie said.
“They were trapped, it was probably 20 to 30 minutes trying to get people out of there,” Garrett said, explaining that first responders couldn’t get there because the road was impassable from outside the neighborhood.
“There was a boy with two broken legs in my car and every time we hit a pothole he just screamed, and there were kids bleeding everywhere,” Maggie said. “And he was losing consciousness so we were racing, trying to get him to the hospital.”
The Smiths also rounded up nine stray, suddenly homeless horses and brought them to their own stable, including two ponies they found trapped under the rubble of a barn.
“It was a miracle that they survived,” Maggie said.
She also pointed out that if the tornado had hit their house, which is made of wood, it would’ve been devastated.
“So we’re extremely lucky that we got to be a helper instead of a victim,” Garrett said.
As of this writing, there have been no fatalities attributed to that tornado.
