'Whole house just imploded': Pensacola Beach neighborhood takes brunt of tornado

Homes across Pensacola Beach were badly damaged by the fierce storms that tore through Northwest Florida on Thursday night, but the worst of the destruction was caused by a tornado that hit subdivisions off Ft. Pickens Road toward the west end of Santa Rosa Island.

DeLuna Point was hit especially hard. The Bortnick family was winding down for the night when the alarm on their phones went off warning about a possible tornado.

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“I think we had about 30 seconds after that when it hit us,” said Nick Bortnick. “My family was in the hallway here and I was trying to keep everything from blowing in and as I let go of one of the windows the whole house just imploded.”

Bortnick’s wife, Cherie, and their 9-year-old daughter, rode it out on the stairs leading to the garage. They were trying to get downstairs when they realized the tornado was already hitting the house.

“My daughter, she has intuition,” said Cherie Bortnick. “We got the tornado watch and she started crying and I said, ‘OK, we’ll go into the stairwell and so we did that going down into the garage. My son, he had a nice little fort so he was kinda tucked away on the couch in his little fort and I woke up my husband up and I said, ‘Hey, it’s getting a little dicey.' Then my daughter and I went into the stairwell to the garage and she said, 'It’s really windy, I think one of these garage doors is open, can you go and check and shut it.’ And when I went to go open the door to go into the actual garage, the whole side came in and the golf cart came at us and so that’s when everything really hit.’

The two were unable to get back in the house because the pressure from the tornado was so strong it prevented Cherie from opening the door. When her husband was finally able to open the door to the stairs, his head was covered in blood.

“I ended up getting hit by a door that got blown off the hinges,” said Nick Bortnick. “I had to go to the ER and get five staples in my head, but other than that everybody is fine.”

Nick Johnson and his wife were also home when the tornado struck but unlike the Bortnick’s home that was damaged inside and out, the Johnson’s primarily had exterior damage.

“It sounded like and felt like my whole entire house was going to collapse and I thought I lost them, my husband and my son,” Cherie Bortnick said as she stood surveying her damaged home, surrounded by debris. “So that was the hardest thing for me, but everybody is safe, and possessions are nothing compared to that.”

“I walked outside and saw the lightning show and then we went inside and then about 15 minutes later our dog started going crazy and my ears popped and then we ran in the bathroom and took shelter,” said Nick Johnson. “The house was shaking and all that for what seemed about 10 or 15 minutes. We came down after that and our walls blew out and some of our windows.”

Raymond and Mattie Clay live across the street from the Bortnicks and the Johnsons. The couple has called Pensacola Beach for 30 years and they’ve ridden out several hurricanes, but nothing quite like this, they said.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Raymond Clay said, sitting in the car of his wrecked garage trying to charge his cell phone. “That wind, we’re on pilings here. It seemed as though, and I felt it in the room, that the house was twisting, and I thought the whole damn house was going to fall apart.”

“It woke us up,” said Mattie Clay. “The bedroom started shaking all different ways and it scared the bigivers out of me, so I went looking for him and we just stayed in the bedroom and rode it out.”

Like many of the other beach homes, the tornado blew out panels and garage doors were ripped off the side of the Clay house and the debris was wrapped around their cars and spread all over their yard. Their downstairs freezer was also gone from under the house and the frozen vegetables, ice cream, and other food items stored inside were piled on the lawn.

As people began cleaning up debris and assessing damage at dawn, some were surprised to see people who appeared to be looting, already combing through their neighborhood.

Tiffany Pena’s neighbor shouted to her that two women she didn’t recognize were walking around her yard. When Pena confronted them they were holding a tub of her family’s things including her son’s toys. They claimed to be cleaning for another neighbor.

“I told them, ‘You need to leave, I’m calling the police now and they took off pretty fast,” said Tiffany Pena. “They were just here helping themselves. It’s not even stuff that’s all valuable, but it was really bad, so I just called the county and asked if we could have a police presence out here.”

Escambia County Commissioner Robert Bender, who represents Pensacola Beach, said the county is providing additional deputies to watch for looters.

At the nearby Baywatch condominium complex, resident Rick Alberts didn’t have any damage to his unit, but the storm blew off siding and other items people had stored under their condos. He said the wind was so fierce he went downstairs to ride it out.

“I was upstairs and looking out and it started getting windy and I was scared,” said Rick Alberts. “I ended up sitting underneath the building, right behind the pilon there and watched it. It came in like a train. I was underneath my building but just up against the pilon because I didn’t feel safe up top, I didn’t know if the roof was going to come off. I wasn’t going to get in my bathtub with no roof."

Alberts’ boat, Rick’s Raft, was on a trailer in the parking lot nearby and wind shoved the trailer and boat underneath the front of another car.

“I stayed up there for Sally and I wouldn’t do that again and this felt just as crazy,” said Alberts. “It was crazier than Sally just for a minute. Sally lasted longer, but this came in like a train.”

Bender spent the night and morning watching the storm and responding to emergency calls with rescue crews. He said the storm was worse than predicted but police, EMS and firefighters were quick to respond as conditions deteriorated.

From fires to flooding, he said crews responded to many emergency calls. Bender said there were at least five fires throughout Escambia County, including two on Pensacola Beach, which were quickly stopped from spreading. Parts of Ft. Pickens Road were so flooded some cars stalled, including a group of college-age young people, uninjured, but stuck in their mini-van about a mile and a half past the gate to Ft. Pickens and Gulf Islands National Seashore.

“Even throughout the night Mobile Weather Service kept saying, 'we have another hour of it, we have another hour of it, we have another two hours of it,' so we thought we’d be getting to the end of it and it was still building,” said Bender. “We were just out here answering the calls as they came in and helping people. We went from subdivision to subdivision making sure no one was injured and checking for damage.”

Escambia County is waiving permit fees for severe weather damage repairs to buildings and fences through Oct. 16. The building services department will also have a permitting technician stationed at the Santa Rosa Island Authority beginning Tuesday to assist beach residents.

That’s welcome news for many beach residents, including some who say they were still finishing repairs from Hurricane Sally in 2020.

Sally Damage: Hurricane Sally damage in Pensacola, Escambia County, Santa Rosa County, Walton County

“The crazy part is we were like 75% done with our Hurricane Sally repairs. All brand new impact windows and we were painting the house and doing all that stuff,” said Nick Johnson, his voice trailing off with resignation.

Cherie Bortnick is also thankful the problems weren’t worse, but this is the third house on Pensacola Beach in three years she has been tasked with repairing thanks to storm damage, and for now she’s ready to move.

“I’m done with the beach. It’s pretty, I’ll come visit,” said Bortnick, “but everybody is safe and possessions are nothing and honestly, there are so many amazing people who came out to just help us so those are the things that are important in life, not a house.”

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola Beach tornado hits neighborhood hard off Ft. Pickens Road