Christmas Day Storms Pummel Florida

Heavy Damage And Multiple Injuries As Likely Tornadoes, Torrential Rain Lash Southeast

(CBS/AP)  Powerful storms damaged at least three dozen homes and injured some of their residents as heavy rain, strong wind and possible tornadoes swept across the Southeast on Monday.

In Columbia County, about 60 miles west of Jacksonville, Florida, at least two homes were destroyed and 10 others damaged. National Weather Service meteorologist Scott Carroll said the damage most likely resulted from a tornado.

"Typically you don't get complete structural collapse of a house from straight line winds," Carroll said. He said weather service officials would examine the Lake City and surrounding Columbia County area Tuesday to determine whether a tornado was responsible.

In the mind of Columbia County Sheriff's Department Spokeswoman Laurie Windom, there's no doubt at all that it was a twister tearing through homes.

"The tornado touched down near the Plantation subdivision, it then took a path of, we believe, about seven miles long, between five and 600 yards wide," she told CBS News

The weather service issued tornado warnings on Monday for parts of Columbia, Hardee, Lake, Levy, Manatee and Volusia counties across central Florida.

Fifty planes at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University were damaged, some flipped over and had wings torn off, said Jim Hampton, a spokesman for the school. A maintenance hangar collapsed on a few planes and a small fire also broke out in a support building, but it was quickly contained. The administration building and student center also sustained damage, Hampton said.

Six Daytona Beach residents were taken to the hospital, five with minor injuries, after their apartment complex was evacuated. The storm damaged and destroyed a few apartments and buildings in the area, said Susan Cerbone, a spokeswoman for the city of Daytona Beach.

The storm damaged 100 to 200 mobile homes in the DeLand area. Two people were critically injured and five others received minor injuries, EVAC Ambulance spokesman Mark O'Keefe told the Orlando Sentinel for Tuesday's edition.

Downed power lines and storm debris closed roads in Deland and Daytona Beach areas.

In Pasco County, along the Gulf coast just north of Tampa, two people were taken to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries and more than two dozen homes were damaged as a storm passed the Tampa Bay Golf & County Club shortly before noon, sheriff's deputy Doug Tobin said.

A roof was blown off a home in nearby San Antonio, and several trees were knocked over by high winds, one briefly blocking a county road intersection in New Port Richey, Tobin said.

Back in Columbia County, Windam said: "It's amazing we don't have serious injuries or deaths... We are incredibly blessed today."

She said one person in the area was treated for cuts related to the storms.

The Tallahassee area was also swamped by rain as the storms moved through, with more than 5½ inches falling at the regional airport, the most there on a Christmas Day since 1897, weather service meteorologist Ron Block said.

In South Carolina, the weather service issued tornado warnings in the state's coastal counties when the strongest storms moved through in the morning. As of Monday afternoon, there had been no reports of a tornado.

The rain stopped in most of the state by evening with no significant damage reported. In Florence, about 80 miles east of Columbia, about 2.2 inches of rain fell, a record for Christmas Day.