Tuesday night's storm set tornadoes down in Santa Rosa County and Escambia County causing structural damage, knocking trees down, and turning over a truck on the I-10 bridge. Daniel Hahn with the Santa Rosa County Emergency Management said the damage in SRC "was nowhere like what's going on in Pensacola," but noted a neighborhood in the San Miguel St area off Avalon Blvd had trees down and structural damage.
Dave Anderson, who lives in the area of San Miguel St and 13th Ave said the funnel didn't touch down until it passed his house.
Rick and Rebecca Baggett, Anderson's neighbors said how fortunate they were. Rick said, "We dodged a bullet." He said it's just a matter of cleaning up now.
Eric Shafer, a contractor, put his skills to use on his neighbor's house owned by Phillip Nared. Shaffer said, "I'm working on his house before mine." Nared's house had significant roof damage and what looked like more in the backyard. At Shafer's place, he said trees took out his fence and he'll probably need a new roof.
Lena Adams said she swam through Ivan and now (made it through) a tornado. Her daughter, she said, lives in this trailer Adams owns. It's a two-roof Fleetwood, a tough trailer. The meter box is on the roof. "It's a tough little neighborhood."
Gerald Young, retired Navy, came with chainsaws to help Adams and others help cut up the fallen trees, which barely missed doing any significant damage to the home.
Dana Walsh, who also lives there, said she rode out the storm in the tub. She said she watched it on the news hit I-10 and heard the tornado touch down where she is. Walsh said people say a tornado sounds like a train coming through, but said it was the loudest thing she's heard. "It wasn't a train. I don't know what…Now I just want to fix the fence and get the yard back to normal…We were blessed."
Greg Brown, SRC property appraiser, came through the neighborhood to assess damage. He said they'll check back again at the end of the year and see if they can help.
East Milton also took storm damage. Walt Reese, on Lakeside Drive, had to contact his son to chop up an enormous oak tree that fell during the storm. Reese was fortunate it didn't hit his home. However, he did say a tree fell across Lakeside Drive taking out the power lines.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: "Tough neighborhood" takes a hit from storm