LAKE MARY, Fla. – Several businesses near Skyline Drive are now dealing with damage after a rare tornado touched down in Lake Mary on Monday morning.
Our News 6 crew surveyed the area, close to I-4 and Lake Emma Road and saw several trees had snapped and fallen onto fences and in parking lots. There was also a trailer that flipped on its side from the strong winds.
Emily Helmberger, who works at Aspire Communications, said the company uses the trailer for their traveling crews.
[PHOTOS: Damage across Central Florida as severe weather hits the area]
“We install fiber across the United States. Some of our guys like to stay in the trailer instead of an Air BNB or hotel,” said Helmberger. “We just actually fixed the A/C in this and now it’s pretty much broken.”
Helmberger said she was working Monday morning when all of the sudden the front doors started to swing open.
“The door is pretty heavy, so we just all ran inside an office with now windows,” said Helmberger. “It was really loud, but we didn’t hear a train sound or anything like that.”
Helmberger said a truck that was parked out front was just inches away from being crushed by a tree. There were more close calls than anything, but another car parked at the business next door did have a tree fall on top of it.
Felicia Powell, who works at HBK Engineering, said another tree that fell over nearly hit her car.
“I was in the office and a light started blinking, but when I heard the rumbling from the windows that’s what scared me more than anything,” said Powell.
Powell said the damage was done in a short amount of time.
Mark Katz, who also works in the area, said it all happened in less than a minute. He showed our News 6 crew the exhaust fan from an A/C unit that blew off the roof.
“[It] made a very loud sound,” said Katz. “[I] knew that the sound was not good when it came down.”
Katz said there is now a hole in the roof that will need to be fixed. Our News 6 crew saw workers assessing the damage Monday morning and starting to patch what they could so rain wouldn’t get into the building.
Katz said he has experienced hurricanes while working here before, but the damage from this storm was worse. Thankfully, there are no reported injuries.
“Probably between the three hurricanes that I’ve seen during this time working in this building, combined the damage doesn’t equate to what we’ve seen today,” said Katz.