Tornado Devastates Miami Neighborhood, Injures 30

MIAMI — A tornado skipped through a residential neighborhood Wednesday, tossing people and cars into the air and damaging about 100 homes and a church. About 30 people were injured.

Jose Vega, whose home was damaged, said the tornado “sounded like a million buffalo galloping. The house was shaking like a giant had it in its hand.”

The tornado, accompanied by powerful thunderstorms, struck an unincorporated area southwest of Miami. Three people were taken to a hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening, and about 30 were treated at the scene, said Metro-Dade Fire Chief Donald Paulison.

Maritza Acosta was in her car when it was picked up to about the height of a one-story house and thrown 50 feet.

From a hospital bed, where she was treated for cuts and bruises, she said, “Whoever sees my car thinks I died.” The passenger side of the car’s roof was mashed down level with the trunk and hood.

The twister grabbed Marie Pineda’s purse from her hands and then lifted her feet into the air as she held onto a heavy garbage can holder.

“I could see everything swirling around me. It was dark. Everything looked really eerie--yellow and green,” said the 105-pound woman.

In addition to the Florida tornado, there was plenty of bad weather to go around.

Sleet and heavy snow glazed highways Wednesday from the Ohio Valley to New England, closing schools and airports and stranding drivers.

Thirteen inches of snow was reported at Utica, N.Y., with 10 inches by midday in central Indiana, 9 inches in Illinois and up to a foot in Missouri. Snow flurries were reported as far south as Alabama.

Up to 21 inches of snow fell along the Great Lakes in upstate New York. Rochester’s total this season jumped from 43 inches to 64, 13 more inches than all of last season, and Buffalo’s 10 inches of new snow gave it a season total of 88 inches, up from 35 at this time last year.

In New England, Concord, N.H., had 6 inches by afternoon, for a total so far this season of more than 40 inches, compared with 35 during all of last winter.

Boston’s Logan Airport was closed eight times through the day for snow removal, and Cleveland’s airport was closed for two hours.

Nonemergency car travel was banned in a dozen of Ohio’s hardest-hit counties. About 300 people were stranded at the downtown Greyhound bus station in Columbus.

Snow-packed, icy highways stopped motorists in the Midwest.

“Every room in town was booked, and they set up a shelter at the Presbyterian church down the way for people who couldn’t get a room,” said Matt Nelson, night auditor at a motel in Mattoon, Ill.

About 75 to 100 people had to spend the night at a school in Indiana’s Shelby County.

So many people got the day off in Massachusetts that NYNEX Corp., the regional phone company, reported extremely heavy call volume. Some people had to wait for dial tones or could not get through at all.