We had been hearing of "El Niño effect" predictions since the summer of 1997 but little did we know that it would have such a devastating impact on our community.
We had our first taste of El Niño on Dec. 10, 1997. A stalled cold front dumped 12 inches of rain on our area in two days and led to considerable flooding. Evacuations were necessary and multiple agencies were called in for assistance. Fortunately, there were no injuries or deaths. Between that day and the killer tornado on Feb. 23, 1998, we endured six small tornadoes, including one on Dec. 27 that damaged or destroyed 32 structures and contributed to three more floods. We were declared a disaster area due to the flooding and had worked intensively with the State Department of Emergency Management and the Federal Emergency Manage-ment Agency (FEMA). This came in very handy for what was to come.
Combination Department
Osceola County Fire/Rescue is a combination department that covers 1,450 square miles of central Florida, south of the Walt Disney World complex. We are staffed by 130 full-time employees and 175 volunteer firefighters from the Campbell City, Deer Run, Holopaw, Kings Point, Kissimmee Heights, Narcoossee, Pine Grove Park, Poinciana and Yeehaw Junction volunteer fire departments. Last year, our department responded to 15,382 incidents from 12 stations across the county. We currently staff two full-time engines, one full-time truck company, one full-time tactical unit and five advanced life support (ALS) transport rescues. In addition, we have 10 engines staffed by volunteer departments as well as attack trucks, tankers, brush trucks and other specialty pieces of equipment.
Photo Courtesy of Osceola County Fire/Rescue A front view of the Ponderosa RV Park. There were 25 RVs here before the tornado.
Osceola County had come under a severe thunderstorm watch earlier in the evening, which was upgraded to a tornado watch and then a warning around midnight. I was home asleep on Feb. 23 when my phone rang at about 1 A.M. Our dispatch center was calling with reports of multiple tornado touchdowns in the area.
I heard Rescue 11 call for help from a strip mall at Buenaventura Lakes Boulevard and Boggy Creek Road. They stated they had a shopping center collapse, possibly with 15 to 20 people trapped. A bar at the end of the shopping center was occupied at the time of the tornado touchdown. I did not hear the on-duty battalion chief responding, so I started for the scene.
I switched my radio off the scan mode to concentrate on the units on the scene in Buenaventura Lakes, so I was unaware of the first incident operating in Campbell City, in the southwest part of the county. That incident was being handled by Battalion Chief Tracy Stubbs, Division Chief Kevin Yelving-ton and Campbell City Volunteer Fire Chief Charlie Weyel with firefighters operating in several locations that had sustained heavy structural damage. These included the Broadmore Mobile Home Park, Orange Vista subdivision, Good Samaritan Village and the Publix Shopping Center. There were few injuries and no reported fatalities.
At this point, we still had no idea of the scope of destruction that had made its way across the county in just 13 minutes. The storms were moving at nearly 50 mph.
Prior to my arrival, I began calling for additional resources from surrounding departments since I knew we would need more help for the shopping center collapse. I also had communications notify our three local hospitals of a probable mass-casualty incident. I did not know at the time but our phone communications for the Buenaventura Lakes area were severely disrupted when a major switching station just north of a new supermarket was destroyed. Our communications center is about two miles away and telephone communications were spotty at best for the next 12 hours. I requested Squad 1 from Orange County Fire/ Rescue. Squad 1 was unavailable because it was responding to a tornado in the Winter Garden area.
At the time of the touchdowns, Osceola County Rescue 11, Station 11 (the Kissimmee Heights Volunteer Fire Department) and Station 61 (the Kings Point Volunteer Fire Department) were responding to a carnival ride collapse at a rodeo grounds. There was one reported entrapment.
When R-11 neared the Buenaven-tura Lakes Boulevard and Boggy Creek Road intersection, the crew saw the shopping center come apart before them. Firefighter/EMT Gary Simpson later told me he "had never seen anything like that in his life." He and his partner, Firefighter/ Paramedic Scott Schwartz, immediately stopped and reported that incident to dispatch, which then sent Rescue 50 to the rodeo grounds.
Dispatch then reported there was no longer an entrapment at the rodeo grounds, so I diverted the additional units that were responding there to the strip mall collapse. Nearly every career unit on duty at the time was operating at one of the touchdown sites.
Photo Courtesy of Osceola County Fire/Rescue If you don't think such an incident will become a media circus, think again. Within 24 hours, news crews from all over the world had arrived in our area.
When units from Station 11 arrived on the scene, the scope of the incident began to take shape. At the intersection before the storm there had been two convenience stores on both sides of the street and a strip mall behind the Farmstore convenience store. In his initial on-scene report, the incident commander, Kissimmee Heights Assistant Chief Steve Hensley, reported "enormous destruction and multiple patients." I noticed more and more debris in the roadway - trees, wood, concrete blocks, roofing materials and power lines. It was unnerving to pull into an intersection I had driven through hundreds of times but did not immediately recognize because all of the landmarks were gone.
Station 61 units arrived just before I did and began assisting with triage and treatment. When I reached the scene, I received a face-to-face briefing from Hensley and assumed command. I asked Hensley, Chief Jon Haskett and Deputy Chief Don Adams of Station 61 to begin a reconnaissance of the area of the bar and a search for additional victims. I was informed by our communications center that Tower 1, Rescue 1, Rescue 8 and District 1 from the Orlando Fire Department would be responding. Rescue 2 from Kissimmee Fire Department arrived and assisted with transportation of two injured people. Kissimmee was also involved in this incident in its own capacity because a subdivision called Lakeside was in the tornado's path. Many Lakeside homes were also heavily damaged but there were no fatalities there.
R-11 was sent to Florida Hospital, Kissimmee, with the first wave of patients and ordered to return for more victims because the hospital was only a short distance from the scene. In all, 10 victims were transported from our location; all but one of the injuries were minor or non life-threatening - amazing considering the amount of damage to the bar.
As we were operating, Chief Matt Meyers arrived on the scene. We received walk-up citizen reports of another site that was hit - the Ponderosa RV Park, about two miles southwest of our location. Still more people came to our scene to tell us that there was yet another incident, this time in the Morningside Acres mobile home development about two miles to the northeast. Osceola County Fire Chief Jeff Hall arrived at our location to assess damage, then responded to Morningside Acres.
When our incident at the Buenaventura Lakes mall was stabilized, Meyers left for the battalion chief's office to call in additional manpower to begin opening the emergency operation center. I released Haskett from Station 61 and Chief John Donahue from Station 11 and their personnel and had them respond to Ponderosa and evaluate the situation. I was also able to redirect mutual aid units on the radio via the Orlando Fire Department district chief on the scene to respond to both Ponderosa and Morningside to help Hall.
Photo Courtesy of Osceola County Fire/Rescue The death and destruction resulted in a visit by President Clinton. Here, he surveys the damage and meets with victims and rescue workers.
After terminating Farmstore command at the shopping center, I contacted Morningside command to see if it needed my help. Hall asked me to respond to Ponderosa, a 200-unit recreational vehicle (RV) park at the intersection of the Florida Turnpike and Boggy Creek Road.
As I approached over the bridge leading to the park, I was surprised by the number of units operating there. Haskett had established command and had teams triaging and retrieving patients from inside the park while Donahue was coordinating transportation efforts. A staging area was established at the K-Mart plaza on E-192, about two miles from Ponderosa, and victims with serious injuries were flown via air transport to Orlando Regional Medical Center. Multiple fatalities were found, so a temporary staging area had to be established for the deceased.
We called in help from our volunteer departments not directly affected by the storm, including units from Deer Run, Holopaw, Narcoossee, Poinciana and Yeehaw Junction. We also received mutual aid from Reedy Creek Emergency Services, AMT, Harbor City EMS in Brevard County, Polk County EMS and St. Cloud Fire/Rescue. Within hours, we had transported 62 people from Ponderosa and retrieved four fatalities.
It was now about 4 A.M. and we still had recon teams combing the park for additional victims. The most eerie sight was right after dawn, when we first saw the scope of destruction. Some of the RVs were blown completely across the Florida Turnpike, a distance of 300 or more feet.
The emergency operations center was opened by Osceola County Emer-gency Management Captain Steve Proctor at 2 A.M. The State Warning Point (the state emergency management clearing house) was told of our situation and began to assemble resource teams to respond to the incident. Haskett had also requested K-9 search teams to look for missing victims. K-9 teams from the St. Petersburg, Tampa and Temple fire departments responded. It took the sheriff's office some time to determine six people still were unaccounted for at Ponderosa.
The Morningside units were also reporting missing people. Units from the Orange County Sheriff's office, Miami-Dade and Sarasota fire department K-9 teams responded to assist the units at Morningside. A specially equipped helicopter from NASA, capable of seeing under soil and water, was called in to help locate the remaining Morningside victims.
Lessons Learned
- Even trunked 800 mhz systems are subject to overload. Our radio system handled three times its normal traffic during the initial stages of the disaster, which resulted in numerous busy signals.
- When dealing with FEMA in regard to natural disasters, it is imperative to keep good records and receipts of all expenditures, including employee hours. It is worth your department's time to find out ahead of time which expenses are reimbursable at state and federal levels.
My hopes are for a speedy recovery for the victims, a return to normal in the county - and that I will be retired before the next El Niño.
William Lindlau is the division chief of training for Osceola County, FL, Fire/Rescue, where he has served since 1979, when the countywide department was created. He is a Florida state certified firefighter, fire officer and fire instructor.
