Rocky Pogge lived in Miami during Hurricane Andrew.
“That’s what it looked like,” Pogge told the Tallahassee Democrat on Friday afternoon, after tornadoes and thunderstorms ripped through Tallahassee in the morning.
Pogge, owner of NorthFlora Collective, a plant store in Railroad Square, said the storm devastated the arts district.
Some buildings no longer have roofs.
“It’s terrible,” she said. “One of the galleries has completely disappeared, destroyed on the ground. Inside the store, there is water and glass everywhere, the roof has been ripped off.”
Railroad Square was one of the hardest hit areas in Tallahassee, along with Indianhead Acres, Myers Park and College Town.
The Tallahassee train station, which was just renovated, was not spared by the tornado’s winds as it sits behind Railroad Square. The station opened last fall and has become VisitTallahassee’s visitor information and welcome center.
But on Friday morning, pink insulation covered the ground outside and inside the building. Water dripped on the seats at the Todos os Santos Cinema and pieces of wood with nails embedded in them were scattered across the parking lot.
Twisted sheets of metal from the roofs of Railroad Square buildings were brought to College Town and spread throughout the student housing complexes, damaging cars in the process.
A video above shows the holes the sheet metal left when the wind tore it off the roofs of old warehouses.
Friday night, 79,000 utility customers in the city of Tallahassee were without power and cars lined up and brought traffic to a standstill at the few stations that were open.
There is one GoFundMe for Railroad Square businesses affected by the storm in https://www.gofundme.com/f/poststorm-recovery-for-rrsq-businesses
Ana Goñi-Lessan, state surveillance reporter for USA TODAY Network – Florida, can be reached at agonilessan@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared in the Tallahassee Democrat: Railroad Square in Tallahassee was hit hard by morning thunderstorms and tornado
