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CRYSTAL RIVER, Fla. — Bay area communities are still reeling from a series of tornadoes that touched down early Thursday.
Cleanup and recovery efforts continued Friday in Citrus County. Some residents managed to avoid the full brunt of the storm, while others were not so lucky.
Disbelief and shock are just a few of the words being used by residents.
“To see it like this: I’m in shock. Literally, I’m in shock,” Carlos Alves said.
He said the damage left behind by the storm is a sight that has been hard for him to comprehend.
“See how it just made like almost like a blender? It puts everything into the middle,” Alves said. “It took everything off the walls, everything off the counters and look, it put everything in the middle. It’s literally a disaster in here.”
Alves is the property manager of Plantation Point, a business plaza left standing as a shell of its former self.
“You can see how far it threw the dumpster. It literally shot it across the field,” he said.
And a field of debris now sitting outside the property as well as on the inside.
“I used to clean a couple of years ago because I have a cleaning business,” Alves said. “Now that I come in here, I remember going upstairs. If you can walk in, now, there is no upstairs.”
An entire roof is gone — all that remains are loose possessions and insulation hanging in the rafters. Not to mention two hammers stuck inside a wall, courtesy of mother nature.
“If you turn around, the roof that was here — there it is,” Alves said. “There’s the roof. Sitting on that man’s roof.”
Elsewhere on the property, he finds similar sights.
“This unit here just opened two weeks ago,” he said. “They just moved in two weeks ago.”
An entire second floor collapsed with insulation everywhere. Water from the rain that came with the tornado can be heard dripping within this unit.
“I was heartbroken to give them the news that their unit was destroyed, and it broke their heart because they put a lot of time into this unit,” Alves said.
“It’s almost like a divorce,” he added. “You know? To me, it felt like a divorce because I’m never going to see these people again, and it’s sad.”
As Alves continues to survey the damage, he begins to think about what comes next. Something that’s easier said than done.
“The last couple of days I’ve been scarred,” he said. “I’m hoping it goes away because this has been tough. This is a tough one.”
Alves said he does have insurance and has been in touch with companies to start the process to bring his plaza back to its former glory.
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Calvin Lewis
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