OCALA, Fla. — Strong storms moved through Ocala on Saturday afternoon, bringing down trees, damaging homes and leaving thousands without power.
One of the hardest-hit homes was near NE 14th Street, where a neighbor’s tree fell onto a garage.
Homeowner Michelle Flanagan said her daughter and grandchildren were inside the home when the tree came crashing down.
“Neighbor’s tree came and hit my house and damaged my garage. You can see daylight through there, and insulation’s all over, wires all over. There were tree limbs, branches all over,” Flanagan said.
Flanagan said she has lived at the property for 16 years and had tried to prevent something like this from happening. She said it was not the first time her home had been damaged by a fallen tree.
“I already had one before. It happened a couple years ago. Had all that cleaned up, damaged up with years ago, and now here we go again,” she said.
As storms moved through the area, debris remained scattered across several Ocala streets. Power lines could also be seen hanging low across at least one neighborhood.
Flanagan said her home lost power immediately after the storm, and service had not been restored when Channel 9 spoke with her around 7 p.m.
Ocala Electric Utility said shortly after the storms passed that crews were working to restore power as quickly as possible.
By Saturday evening, the utility’s outage map showed about 600 customers remained without electricity, down from approximately 3,000 outages reported earlier.
In a later social media update, Ocala Electric Utility said crews were replacing damaged transmission poles and continuing work to restore the electric system.
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