PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — A cold beer in her hand, Sharon Murphy sat in a lawn chair outside her Dunedin home trying to unwind Thursday afternoon.
Roughly a mile from Honeymoon Island, relaxation normally comes easy in her 55+ community, Honeymoon Mobile Home Park.
On Thursday, though, relaxation was impossible.
Just feet away from her chair sat a huge pile of twisted sheet metal, water-logged lumber, and other sundry scraps. For Murphy, they’re an in-your-face reminder of what she survived Thursday morning around 1:50 a.m.
A tornado carved its way through the northern corner of the mobile home park.
“It was kind of a roaring sound,” Murphy recalled. “Oh, it was scary. I tell ya what, I was so scared.”
An emergency alert to her smartphone made her aware of the approaching tornado. Murphy flipped on the news.
“And it showed it was in Dunedin,” she said.
The 83-year-old widow, who made the Dunedin home her full-time home last year, did not hesitate. She got in the bathtub and prayed for the tornado to pass.
“It seemed like forever,” she said. “It really did. I thought, ‘Oh, what am I going to do? What am I going to do, you know?’ But, God was with us.”
When the tornado passed, she was fine, but her home and the two next to hers were not.
According to the National Weather Service (NWS), two tornadoes made their way through the greater Tampa Bay area.
One hit Crystal River and peeled off roofs, shattered windows, and snapped trees.
“It was like a train, and it was the most horrific sound ever. And I grabbed my baby — she was dead asleep — I grabbed her from her bed, and I ran into the bathroom,” said Brittany Botocan, who lives in Crystal River.
The other hit North Clearwater before striking part of Dunedin.
Survey teams from the NWS traveled to the two locations and said the tornado in Crystal River was an EF-2 storm. The other tornado in Clearwater started out as an EF-1 but strengthened to a low-level EF-2.
“If we were looking at, say, F-3, E-4, or even more — it’s very difficult to survive those types of tornadoes,” said Brian LaMarre, the Meteorologist-in-Charge of the Tampa Bay Area Weather Forecast Office of the NWS.
Meanwhile, at her battered home, Murphy wonders about what’s next.
“I lost the roof off the garage,” she said. “It’s caving in.”
The damage is extensive, but Murphy is without home insurance. She dropped her policy earlier this year, because she could no longer afford it.
“Our insurance is getting so high here,” said Murphy, a Social Security recipient.
Luckily, the trying day brought some relief.
Around 20 volunteers from Team Depot, Home Depot’s associate volunteer force, responded to the mobile home park to help, and they didn’t charge a dime.
“Oh, I tell you what, it was a blessing,” Murphy said. “I’m glad we’ve got good people in this world.”
