At the center of Florida’s tornado damage, a retirement community picks up the pieces

He winced and tears welled in his eyes, thinking of the horror that lay ahead.

“I’m not coming back here no more,” he told his stepdaughter, Savannah Rath.

Two days earlier, he and Carter cowered under pillows in their bedroom closet as a ferocious tornado traveling on the outer bands of Hurricane Milton ripped the roof off their home and left gashes of destruction throughout this 330-acre development. Now they were returning to a cordoned-off disaster zone — the site of the deadliest and most calamitous impacts of this storm — to sift through the remnants of their lives and salvage what they could.

As they approached, Rath gasped.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Oh my God.”

“I don’t want to go back,” Bartholomew said.

Around him, along block after destroyed block, mobile homes lay shredded and mangled, flipped and pancaked into their neighbors. Twisted shards of metal roofing hung from the trees like tinsel. The clubhouse where a karaoke party had been scheduled for that night was now the command center for the police, fire and medical personnel still working to recover bodies, clear wreckage and help residents begin the path toward recovery.

The tornado struck precisely among some of those most vulnerable to natural disasters — elderly people and those who live in manufactured housing. The results were catastrophic, with at least six people dead in Spanish Lakes and about 30 more hospitalized, and scores of homes damaged or destroyed.

“The pain — it’s not just me,” said Bartholomew, a 56-year-old licensed heavy-equipment operator who now works at a Winn-Dixie supermarket. “It’s my whole neighborhood, my whole community.”

Emergency vehicles trapped by the tornado

St. Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson was at headquarters in Fort Pierce on Wednesday afternoon preparing for tropical storm winds and flooding, the expected conditions on the east coast of Florida, about 150 miles away from where the storm would make landfall.

He and his colleagues started getting multiple alerts of tornadoes in the area hours before Milton slammed the state. Within a span of 90 minutes, about a dozen tornadoes were reported and the county’s 911 center received more than 900 calls for help, officials said.

Across southern Florida, the number of tornadoes — at least 47 reported — was not unusual for a hurricane, except for coming in such a brief span of time, said Christopher Nowotarski, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University who researches tornadoes. Hurricane Ivan spawned a record 118 tornado reports when it struck Alabama and Florida in 2004, while Hurricane Beryl produced an estimated 68 of them after making landfall in Texas in July.

But in those storms, the tornadoes touched down over multiple days and in multiple states, he said. Milton’s tornado activity “was crammed into a relatively short period compared to other tropical cyclones,” he said in an email.

For Pearson, the sheriff, “these reports were coming in real time and this storm was moving fast,” he said in an interview.

Then he heard a crash. About 100 yards away from him, one of the tornadoes destroyed a 27,000-square-foot iron structure designed to house the department’s high-water rescue vehicles and other emergency equipment.

“Collapsed. Gone. Essentially locking in and entrapping all of our emergency equipment for the storm,” he said. “This structure was wiped out in a matter of seconds.”

As county officials worked with heavy machinery to clear away rubble and free their equipment, more tornadoes were being reported moving north, including at Spanish Lakes.

Just before 5 p.m., Rath, who lived about 50 miles north, texted Carter, her mother, about a tornado reported near her retirement community.

“We wouldn’t know,” Carter responded. “We lost power.”

Carter, who was born and raised in Fort Pierce and worked in the insurance industry, moved to Spanish Lakes 13 years ago. Her mother also lived there. Carter arrived when she wasn’t yet 50, she said, skirting the park’s 55-and-over rule, and didn’t participate much in the activities for seniors.

There was bocce ball and shuffleboard, a swimming pool for the residents and a separate one for their relatives and the kids.

“This is a terrible thing to say, but I felt these were all old people,” she said.

But she grew to love the community and her neighbors. Bartholomew moved in with her two years ago.

The night of the storm, Rath instructed her mom to stay away from the windows.

“I have a place cleared out in the closet with a bunch of comforters and pillows to put over top of us,” Carter replied.

“Okay just hang on for dear life,” Rath wrote.

“Yes hopefully it won’t come to that,” Carter responded.

Bartholomew went outside and saw the dark twister coming from the south. He was shocked by its size.

“It can’t be that wide,” he recalled thinking.

He rushed back to the door and gave it one last look. He saw what appeared to be boards and shingles whipping around it high in the air.

“It was ripping and tearing and it was coming our way,” he said.

He slammed the door. Hit the deadbolt. Carter grabbed Mikey Frank, their Jack Russell terrier-chihuahua mix, and they all pushed into the closet. The tornado tore through their home quickly, although it didn’t seem that way to Carter.

“I just didn’t think it was ever going to let loose of us,” she said.

‘No words can describe it’

Pearson raced up Interstate 95 to join his deputies and other first responders at the scene. He was staggered by the wreckage.

“It went through and it picked up homes, it threw ’em hundreds of yards. It put two, three four of them together, crumbled ’em up,” he said. “No words can describe it.”

The destruction was concentrated on the western and northern flanks of the community. Many homes in other parts of Spanish Lakes escaped unscathed or with minimal damage. County Administrator George Landry estimated that 30 to 40 percent of the more than 1,200 homes in Spanish Lakes suffered some damage.

Spanish Lakes has been transitioning from manufactured homes — or mobile homes, as many call them — into concrete structures, but residents say those permanent structures are still the minority.

Across the country, people who live in manufactured homes are 15 to 20 times more likely to be killed in a tornado than those in a permanent structure, the National Weather Service estimates. Though they make up about 6 to 7 percent of the housing stock nationally, they account for more than half of tornado deaths, said Stephen Strader, an associate professor of geography and the environment at Villanova University. In St. Lucie County, they account for as much as 15 percent of housing, he said, citing census data.

They are especially vulnerable because tornadoes can so easily toss them — and anyone inside — if they aren’t adequately secured to the ground. In this part of Florida, they are required to be designed to withstand winds of 100 to 110 mph, although tornadoes can spin much faster.

“Most manufactured homes in Florida are built better than almost anyplace in the country, and it’s still not strong enough,” Strader said.

Kimberly Stiles, a 65-year-old bartender, was taking a shower in Spanish Lakes when she had the “oddest feeling” that her entire mobile home was moving. She jumped out and saw her roof had blown off and a telephone pole had crashed onto her back porch, which had separated from the rest of the house. She called the fire department and waited roughly two hours for first responders to rescue her, she said.

“I’m happy to be alive; that’s been my attitude,” Stiles said. “I’m okay with losing everything I have.”

The tornado killed one of her friends, whose body was recovered from the rubble, she said. Stiles declined to identify the friend, citing privacy concerns.

A couple hundred first responders rushed to Spanish Lakes that evening, including multiple police agencies, emergency management personnel, and a state search-and-rescue team, said Landry, the county administrator.

“It was an all-hands-on-deck call,” he said.

When Pearson arrived, he said, one of his deputies was speaking to a resident trapped in the rubble.

“Unfortunately, we couldn’t get to them in time, they had so much severe injuries,” he said.

As the night wore on, the winds from the approaching hurricane intensified. The county called off the search for survivors about 11 p.m., Landry said, when it was too dangerous to continue without risking the lives of first responders. They resumed at first light.

“It’s one of the hardest decisions to make,” Landry said. “Because you want to keep working until you can’t. You don’t want to walk away.”

‘I’m not coming back here’

On his return, Bartholomew stepped gingerly through the wreckage, the broken glass and twisted metal mixed with the remains of their belongings: guitars and fishing reels, photo albums and family videocassettes. They came to get what was most precious, before the demolition.

As Carter was hauling her clothes out of a back window, her daughter had been praying with volunteers helping on the street.

“Mommy!” Rath shouted. “Look!”

Carter came out front.

“We just did a prayer circle, and then found the Bible,” she said.

“You found my family Bible?” Carter asked.

There were moments of laughter during the sad errand. A couple of old Playboy magazines emerged from the heap, even though Carter had thought she’d thrown out Bartholomew’s stash. He said they blew in from the neighbors.

But Bartholomew’s feelings were still raw. He hurled a pair of nunchucks he found. He picked up a battered socket wrench set and dumped it back into the pile.

“They’re no good man, all my tools!” he said.

He picked up two flags, one Confederate, one American, and walked up his neighbor’s roof, which was now on the ground and lodged into Bartholomew’s own home. At the peak, he tied the American flag to a broken board and looked out over Spanish Lakes.

Then he slid down.

“I’m done with it,” he said. “I’m not coming back here.”

There were tears in his eyes. And he walked away.

Partlow and Kirpalani reported from Lakewood Park, Fla. Joselow reported from Washington. Scott Dance and Kasha Patel in Washington contributed to this report.