Chaos, Gaps Slow Deadly Florida Twister EMS Response

Apr. 8--THE VILLAGES -- The two Lake-Sumter EMS medics had no clue they were on a collision course with a tornado.

They had just picked up an elderly man who had fallen at home and were headed to The Villages Regional Hospital when fierce winds slapped their ambulance and nearly tossed it off the road. Tree limbs raked the windshield. Debris pelted the ambulance's side. Lightning struck the roof.

"Stop the truck!" paramedic Jeremy Young yelled to his partner.

"The truck's in park," Toni Bowling shouted from the driver's seat.

But its wheels kept sliding along the pavement. And that's when, at about 3:15 a.m. on Feb. 2, Young saw the roof of a house fly by his rear window.

Young and Bowling's story illustrates the logistical chaos that emergency crews in Sumter, Lake and Volusia faced immediately after three tornadoes ripped through Central Florida, killing 21 people, injuring hundreds and causing at least $24 million in damage.

Emergency-dispatch recordings, call logs and internal evaluations show the devastating storms caused communications failures and created physical challenges that hampered the emergency-response effort. Though officials don't attribute any deaths to response delays, an Orlando Sentinel review found that:

Initial response times to the areas hardest hit in Lake and Sumter were delayed, up to 10 minutes more than Lake-Sumter EMS' recent average, mainly because roadway debris slowed rescuers.

In Lake and Sumter, only about two dozen ambulances were initially available to handle more than 100 emergency calls during the first two hours after the twisters hit.

Communications networks failed in northeastern Lake County, near Lake Mack, when a 1,700-foot radio tower fell, forcing workers to scream over walkie-talkie systems -- or not talk at all.

Emergency operators from several agencies and a hospital couldn't get through to Lake's makeshift emergency-operations center for hours because its 24 phone lines were constantly busy.

In Volusia, communications gaps initially meant incident commanders on either side of the county didn't know they both had been hit by tornadoes.

When their ambulance was dispatched to The Villages, Young said, nobody at his communications center told him and Bowling that a tornado was headed their way. When the terrifying winds died down, the EMS duo rushed the patient to the hospital -- and headed back into the worst natural disaster in Lake County's history.

'60 calls all at once'

The first tornado swept eastward across The Villages at 3:10 a.m. before hitting Lady Lake at 3:20 a.m. A second twister with winds up to 165 mph struck rural Lake Mack at 3:48 a.m. About 10 minutes later, it had moved into western Volusia County.

The first EMS call came from Duffy Loop in The Villages of Sumter County about 3:18 a.m., but paramedics took nearly 15 minutes to arrive. All three ambulances that normally cover the area were on prior, unrelated medical calls.

"We had a delayed response because of the other emergency medical calls," Young said. "The biggest thing was, we were hit with 60 calls [in The Villages] all at once."

Jim Judge, Lake-Sumter Emergency Medical Services executive director, said he had 24 ambulances operating in his two counties. Nine more were called in within the hour, he said. About a dozen others from neighboring counties also rolled in to help.

Lake-Sumter paramedics responded to 100 calls within the first two hours -- almost as many as they handle in a normal day.

Extensive damage in the hardest-hit areas -- power outages, spewed debris, fallen trees -- made it nearly impossible for paramedics and other first responders to reach the injured, especially off dirt roads in rural Lake Mack.

"It was just so much devastation," said Ralph Habermehl, Lake-Sumter EMS operations manager. "You can hear the frustration in their [paramedics'] voices: 'We can't get through.' "