Tropical Storm Returns With A Bang

Tropical Storm Fay's return to the west coast came with a bang for Amanda Braswell.

She thought it was lightning at first, then she peered out the living window to check to see if a car had veered off Mondon Hill Road and into her house.

Nothing.

Puzzled, she ventured over to the kitchen. The usual view out her back window had been replaced with a sheer wall of gray metal.

Braswell stepped outside onto the remains of her back porch to find a 60-foot pine tree had toppled over in her backyard, crushing a section of the porch and her white Dodge Durango.

By the time she regained her composure, the cavalry had arrived. Apparently, someone had called emergency services and reported that a truck had crashed into a tree. Three squad cars, a fire engine and an ambulance came wailing up to Braswell's house at the corner of Jasmine Drive and Mondon Hill Road.

After establishing that no one was injured, everyone packed up to leave. There was a slight delay when the ambulance got stuck in the soft mud as it left the yard and Braswell couldn't help but laugh.

An hour later, she was on the phone with the insurance company when a reporter knocked on her door.

She is optimistic.

"At least nobody got hurt," she said, surveying the ruins of the porch addition they had just completed over the July 4 weekend. "I guess that's what insurance is for."

Despite buckets of rain and strong wind gusts, Braswell's Durango is one of the few casualties in Hernando County as a result of Tropical Storm Fay.

"We've gotten very lucky," said Frank DeFrancesco, assistant chief of Hernando County Fire Rescue. "The areas that normally flood have flooded again, but the call load has been relatively light compared to other storms."

Spring Hill Fire Rescue had little to report either.

"It's been a normal day except for a good soaking rain," said Interim Chief Mike Rampino.

If anything, county fire crews have been roaming the county trying to maintain downed power lines. Between Brooksville and the county, there were seven severed power lines from the county line at Masaryktown to Snow Memorial Highway.

As of 3 p.m., Progress Energy was reporting 500 customers without power. About 1,000 Withlacoochee River Electric Cooperative customers were without power over the day, but by 4 p.m. power had been restored to all but 49 residents.

On Friday afternoon, the National Weather service's rainfall totals were incomplete for the whole county. But the Hernando County Airport had reported 1 3/4 inches of rain between Thursday and Friday and wind gusts as high as 43 mph

Scattered showers are expected through the rest of today as Fay's rain bands continue to circle towards the Gulf of Mexico.