Tornado damages Micco mobile home park off U.S. 1 near Sebastian

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When the airborne objects started striking his Micco manufactured home amid a fierce Sunday thunderstorm, 86-year-old cancer patient Ray Choquet initially thought it was hail.

"Then I heard this big 'whoom!' I felt the house shake. And I walked out here, and I saw my screen porch and furniture were gone," Choquet recalled Monday, standing amid puddles of water in his wrecked living room.

"I thought that was it — I didn't even know my roof had gone down the street," he said.

An EF0 tornado pummeled Choquet's home in River Grove Mobile Home Village, scalping the roof and strewing heaps of wind-twisted metal debris across his yard. No injuries were reported, Brevard County Fire Rescue spokesperson Don Walker said. It appears 25 to 30 homes sustained damages, he said.

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A three-person team from the National Weather Service station in Melbourne toured the Micco manufactured-housing park Monday morning, documenting building damages and interviewing residents to determine whether a twister touched down. Primary damages: carports, awnings, siding and skirting.

By midday, Will Ulrich, warning coordination meteorologist, confirmed that an EF0 tornado struck River Grove Mobile Home Village, an age-restricted manufactured housing community stretching between U.S. 1 and the Florida East Coast Railway tracks about ½-mile south of Micco Road.

The brief tornado touched down about 5:36 p.m. near Cherish Court and Love Drive in the neighboring River Grove Mobile Home Village II just west of the railroad tracks, Ulrich said. Metal roofing material atop a couple of those homes got peeled into shapes resembling deformed tin cans.

Packing peak winds of 65 mph to 75 mph, the twister crossed the tracks and followed River Groves Drive, leaving a ½-mile east-southeast path before crossing U.S. 1 and emerging onto the Indian River Lagoon as a short-lived waterspout near Sebastian River Marina and Boatyard, Ulrich said.

An eyewitness watched the tornado transition into a waterspout before dissipating, and several boats got bumped from a storage rack at the marina, NWS reported.

Choquet said he does not have home insurance, and he has a dialysis appointment Tuesday. Plastic sheeting now covers his wet furniture, which he plans to donate to charity. And Buddy, his beloved black-and-white indoor cat, remains missing since the storm struck.

"I'm lucky I didn't get hurt. I thought the house would twist over," Choquet said.

"I'm just happy you're OK. To hell with the furnishings," said Roberta Kwestel, his friend and neighbor.

Most of the River Grove Mobile Home Village storm damages were confined to carports, Ulrich said.

"We're seeing some damage to a couple properties in terms of their roofs. But overall, we think that's because we lost part of the roof because it was connected to the carport or the front porch. And so, it kind of got tossed up into the air with it," Ulrich said, standing on the River Grove Road asphalt during his storm survey.

Ulrich said the EF0 tornado also inflicted damages to the Summit Cove Condominiums, just to the south of River Grove Mobile Home Village. Maximum tornado width: 300 feet to 400 feet.

Walker said Brevard County Emergency Management and American Red Cross officials coordinated potential relief efforts Sunday night at the battered mobile home community.

By Monday morning, clean-up crews used front-end loaders to collect bent-up metal debris, chunks of white foam insulation, and broken lumber with protruding nails that were strewn across the park. Blue tarps appeared atop sections of various roofs to ward off light rainfall.

Don Sinclair and his girlfriend were watching angry-looking clouds swirling Sunday from his River Grove Drive mobile home when frightening lightning strikes chased her into the front porch.

"I walked out to the road and was watching, and the spinning was going all the way around. When I turned around this way, there it was — and a big chunk of metal was flying over the railroad tracks," Sinclair recalled, pointing to the west.

"I ran that way, and my girlfriend saw that carport fly off," he said, pointing around at neighboring homes. "And I hollered to her, 'Get in the tub!' " he said.

"It was really loud — and the metal shearing from the aluminum was just ... the two of them together," he said of the suspected twister.

"And then it was gone. It was complete silence afterward," he said.

About 5:30 p.m. Sunday, NWS forecasters issued a tornado warning for Micco, Roseland and Sebastian, effective through 6:15 p.m.

"It was all about a cold front that was moving in from the west. And the fact that we had a lot of energy in the atmosphere, combined with the sea breeze, (that) led to a localized environment that was favorable for strong-to-severe storms developing in the area," Ulrich said.

"So that's kind of what triggered all of the weather that we saw between 4 and 7 p.m. yesterday evening," he said.

Rick Neale is the South Brevard Watchdog Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY (for more of his stories, click here.) Contact Neale at 321-242-3638 or [email protected]. Twitter: @RickNeale1

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