Pensacola tornado causes major damage

October 18, 2007

Pensacola - A tornado hit Pensacola, Florida and knocking out power in many areas and damaging a church that was unnoccupied at the time.

Video from WEAR showed a funnel cloud against a dark horizon in Pensacola, in the Florida panhandle near the Alabama border.

Escambia County dispatchers have been flooded with calls of damage. At one point dispatchers said dozens of people "enjoying the tornado" lined Cervantes street.

A tornado warning remained in effect east of Pensacola, to Fort Walton Beach, and more storms were expected to roll in from the Gulf of Mexico.

Four or five people were taken to hospitals in the Pensacola area, said Glenn Austin, a spokesman for the Escambia County Sheriff's Office.

The day care center, attached to the Greater Little Rock Baptist Church, "took a direct hit," Austin said, but the children already had been moved to another location because of the tornado warning.