DUNEDIN - At the Scottish Towers condominiums, much of the roof lies in the courtyard. Rain cascades down inside walls and drips from electrical sockets.
Powerful winds early Sunday afternoon ripped away chunks of the roof from a three-story building at Scottish Towers, which overlooks St. Joseph Sound near Honeymoon Island. No one was injured, but damage was extensive.
On Monday, as residents swept water out their front doors, Dunedin fire officials said 30 of the complex's 70 units were unsafe to live in.
"I don't have enough "Do Not Occupy' stickers in my truck for this," deputy fire marshal Steve Strong said as firefighters strung yellow tape across the doors of damaged condos. He also ordered residents out of another six units at the nearby JB Dunedin Causeway Apartments, where one of two buildings sustained roof damage.
The power will remain off at the damaged Scottish Towers units, which sell for about $200,000, until waterlogged walls are torn out and rebuilt, he said.
When water started pouring into their second-floor unit, Ernest and Joyce Ruby Lilley, both 83, got out safely even though she uses a walker and he has had two bypass surgeries and had his right knee replaced.
"We're both invalids," Lilley said. "Our home is flooded."
The Lilleys, who are British, have lived at Scottish Towers for 19 years. On Monday, they stayed with their daughter in Palm Harbor.
"I wish I was back in England," Lilley said. "We never expected anything like this. We've seen others, we were here for Elena (in 1985), but it was nothing compared to this."
Other residents tried to salvage what they could.
On the third floor, Barbara Gallozzi awoke at 4 a.m. Monday to the sound of dripping water. She and friends hurriedly covered her couch, entertainment center and dinette set with garbage bags and plastic sheeting. Then they put out huge pasta and stock pots to catch the drips.
"I'm Italian - what do you want? - and I always have big pots to cook in," said Gallozzi, 49, a supervisor at Nielsen Media Research. "But at this point it's all for naught."
Gallozzi had a place to stay, but she did not have renter's insurance.
"It was one of those things that, you know, I'll get to it," she said.
With power out to all 70 units, residents pulled together, setting up a gas grill to cook meals and moving residents like Gallozzi from waterlogged condos into undamaged units owned by snowbirds. Full-time residents occupy only about a quarter of the units.
"That's probably the only bright side," said Curt Mariani, 44, president of the Scottish Towers owners association. "It's not a full building."
Residents also called the roofer who installed a $90,000 roof 11/2 years ago. Cleanup and repairs were scheduled to begin today.
They did not call 911, at least not right away.
"It never dawned on anyone in the building to call 911 because nothing was on fire, nobody was dying," Mariani said as he grilled a rib eye steak Monday afternoon.
Fire officials arrived at midday Monday to investigate after finally getting a 911 call.
For Strong, ordering people out of their damaged homes was an easy call.
"It looks like a river coming down through each floor and out the electrical outlets," he said.
Fire officials planned to pull the electrical meter for each damaged unit until repairs were made. Many had waterlogged walls that would have to be rebuilt.
When "drywall absorbs water, it becomes so heavy it pulls away from the nails that hold it up and falls like a brick," Strong said. It's heavy enough "to put you in the hospital."
High winds Sunday pried up large pieces of the roof, loosened rooftop air conditioners and twisted aluminum handrails. After the roof went, Mariani went outside to move his truck and a section of privacy fence broke free and twirled overhead "like The Wizard of Oz."
"It was spinning like a Frisbee," he said.
Times Clearwater managing editor Joe Childs contributed to this report.
