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Officials Inspect Florida Storm Damage

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist compared storm devastated central Florida to a bomb scene as crews worked among rubble where at least 19 people died.

Crist issued state disaster area designations to Lake, Seminole, Sumter, and Volusia Counties where thunderstorms and at least one tornado hit early Friday. He was touring the area with FEMA Director David Paulison Saturday to try and convince the federal government to do the same, CNN reported.

"There are heroes all over Central Florida," Crist said of the local relief response to Friday's storms, which flattened buildings and tossed tractor-trailers and trees as it moved across the region.

"The time of day was the most lethal aspect of the tornadoes," the National Weather Service said. Most people were sleeping when tornado warnings were issued that would have given them 9 minutes to 16 minutes to seek safe shelter. The region does not have tornado sirens, CNN said.

Crist told CNN the damage in Lady Lake was the worst he had ever seen in the state.

"It's like a bomb went off in central Florida," the governor told CNN.

Rare birds also victims of Florida storm
 

Eighteen young whooping cranes led south for hundreds of miles from Wisconsin by ultralight aircraft last autumn were killed in storms that hit Florida, dealing a blow to a project to create a second migratory flock of the endangered birds in North America, a spokesman said.

The cranes were being kept in an enclosure at the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge near Crystal River, Florida, when the storms moved in and intensified Thursday night, said Joe Duff, senior pilot and co-founder of Operation Migration.

“The birds were checked late afternoon the day before, and they were fine,” Duff said.

But the area of the enclosure was unreachable by workers at night, and all the birds were found dead Friday, he said. Workers believe the birds might have drowned in a storm surge of the tide.

For the past six years, whooping cranes hatched in captivity have been raised at the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in central Wisconsin by workers who wear crane-like costumes to keep the birds wary of humans.

Church didn't escape Florida storm's wrath
'Hell opened up and half the demons came out,' says one resident

LADY LAKE, Fla. - Parishioners walked over the splintered remains of the Lady Lake Church of God on Friday, rescuing torn Bibles from the jumble of broken pews, altar and glass left behind by a tornado.

Someone had pulled a framed religious poem nearly unscathed from the rubble. Its title: “The Touch of the Master’s Hand.”

The reinforced building had been considered an emergency shelter before the storm early Friday turned it into a twisted mess of wood and metal. Pieces of aluminum roof hung from oak branches and clanked in the wind.

Across a 30-mile swath, the twister and thunderstorms killed at least 19 people and laid waste to hundreds of homes.

People pulled the bodies of their neighbors from under the rubble in the rural central Florida area northwest of Orlando.

“Hell opened up and half the demons came out,” said Russell Timmons, of Lady Lake.

Pastor Larry Lynn, 58, said the building was supposed to be able to withstand 150-mile winds. He stared at the remains of his Pentecostal church and attempted to console parishioners.

“It’s a total loss,” Lynn said, “but there are a lot of people in the area who are in a lot worse shape than we are.”

When told parishioners had found his mother’s Bibles, Lynn choked back tears.

“We’ll move forward,” he said quietly.

Lynn said despite the storm’s damage, he was determined to hold services Sunday — even if it meant holding them in a muddy patch of grass near the church ruins.

“We’re going to be fine. We’ll pull it together.”

Mike Barfield, 41, lost the roof of his trailer home, which sits about 100 feet from the church. As he huddled with his wife and their baby granddaughter in the dark, he looked out the window and saw the building explode.

“I don’t know if it was transformers blowing up or what, but it was a green-colored glow right over the top of the church,” Barfield recalled.

The explosion lasted a few seconds.

“Then it was just nice and peaceful and quiet, no birds, nothing, just total silence,” he said.

In the Lake Mack section of Paisley, Bernadette Fields, 67, said her house sustained little damage, but friends told her the force of the tornado blew two of her neighbors out the bedroom wall of their mobile homes and into the lake where they died. The couple’s dog found them, she said.

“The wind picked me up four times and put me back down,” said Nellie Byrd, who huddled with her husband as the storm shook their home.

A lone baby doll lay in the street, clothes hung from downed trees and telephone poles jutted at 45-degree angles. Mobile homes had crumpled in on themselves, creating massive garbage heaps. A pickup truck lay upside down in a field.