'All of the sudden, the house started shaking': Palm Coast tornado victims share story

William Fallot was getting ready to go to work early Thursday morning in Palm coast when he heard a rumbling. He and his mother, who was also up, thought it was thunder.

But it wasn’t. It was an EF2 tornado twisting toward their house. Its peak winds would later be estimated at 115 mph.

The tornado tore through the B-section of Palm Coast, causing an estimated $954,000 in damage. The twister caused minor damage to seven houses and only cosmetic damage to another nine. It ripped down privacy fences, shattered trees and tossed a big SUV into the street.

It tore through the B-section for six minutes, covering a distance of 1 mile with a maximum width of 200 yards, according to the National Weather Service.

And it caused major damage to one house: the Fallots’ home on Baltimore Lane. The twister tore the roof off the house, leaving a shattered shell of destruction with wooden beams, pieces of ceiling, chunks of insulation and busted widows.

William Fallot’s father, Brad Fallot, said that a decade ago when a tornado had blown through the same neighborhood they had received a warning. Then they heard a sound.

“We heard the freight train sounds and ran into a closet in the other room and it just went over us,” Brad Fallot said.

But the Fallots said they did not receive any warning about the approaching twister on Thursday. Other residents said in news accounts that they did not receive a warning either.

“We got no warning,” Brad Fallot said.

The National Weather Service in Jacksonville issued a warning at 4:20 a.m., which was retransmitted by Flagler County at that time, about a severe thunderstorm. That notice included a warning that the storm could spawn a tornado.

But the National Weather Service did not issue a tornado warning. Flagler County does not issue weather warnings. The county retransmits warnings from the NWS.

A meteorologist at the NWS in Jacksonville said Friday that the weather service did not have a high degree of confidence that there would be a tornado in the storm, so they did not issue the warning. He said they had issued a tornado watch for the region, including Flagler County, at 12:53 a.m.

The tornado touched down at 4:50 a.m. in Palm Coast, just east of Belle Terre Parkway, according to the National Weather Service.

For the Fallots the only warning came when the tornado was upon them shaking their house.

William and Susan Fallot said they were checking the weather because William Fallot works at a golf course.

But the weather was coming for them.

'Oh God'

“It got louder and louder and louder and then all of the sudden the house started shaking,” William Fallot said as he stood outside the wrecked house on Friday afternoon. “I went ‘Oh God.’”

His father was sleeping in a bedroom.

“We went around, tried to run into the bedroom where my dad was sleeping,” William Fallot said. “Before we opened the door, the house started ripping apart, the ceiling popped.”

“We were stuck outside the door, banging on it trying to wake him up,” Susan Fallot said.

Brad Fallot said he awoke.

“I woke up and I heard them screaming and I’m like ‘What is going on?' The roof, I looked up, and the roof was coming off,” Brad Fallot said.

“And something told me get out of the bed and get on the floor. And I rolled over and got on the floor and covered my head,” Brad Fallot said. “And the roof came down and hit me on the back.”

He said one of the timbers from the roof pierced the bed where he had been.

Then the twister moved on.

“Then, it’s just gone, just like that,” Brad Fallot said, “Just a few seconds.”

His family was still yelling for him.

“They were still screaming, (I was) trying to get my breath to tell them I’m OK,” Brad Fallot said.

But the door was jammed, so he was trapped.

“So, finally I got the corner loose and I just put my both feet on the thing and broke the door so I could break out,” he said.

In front of the house, an electrical wire was sparking on the ground. The twister had yanked the line from the house and flung it on the front yard.

“Sparks were flying,” Brad Fallot said.

Hoping to rebuild after the tornado

The family is staying at a hotel in Palm Coast. The Parkview Church in Palm Coast is paying for the hotel.

“They were really super nice,” Brad Fallot said. “They helped us find a hotel to stay in because we obviously couldn’t stay here.”

He said the house has been destroyed and he hopes the insurance will cover building a new one. They had lived in the home for 18 years.

Brad Fallot said: “I hope we can start from scratch and rebuild it.”

A friend of the Fallots' started a GoFundMe for the family at gofundme.com/f/early-morning-tornado-destroys-home.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Palm Coast family tells of EF2 tornado ripping through their home