FORT PIERCE, Fla. — In the Spanish Lakes Country Club community of Fort Pierce, an empty lot now marks the address of 33 Rio De Palmas.
On the property once sat the home of Alejandro Alonso, 66, and his girlfriend, Mary Grace Viramontez, who would have turned 71 years old in November.
Neither Alonso, Viramontez, nor their home survived the deadly EF3 tornado on Oct. 9.
St. Lucie County Deputy Matthew Gerdes will never forget that day.
"It's absolutely unforgettable," Gerdes, who has been a deputy for 18 years, told WPTV reporter Kate Hussey. "And it's just, such a horrific experience to go through."
Gerdes said on the afternoon of Oct. 9, the day Hurricane Milton spawned an unprecedented number of tornadoes across the state of Florida, he was on duty responding to numerous calls across the county.
"A call came out of a tornado striking up in Lakewood Park," Gerdes said.
We've since learned from National Weather Service reports that the first tornado was an EF1. It touched down at 4:14 p.m. with 95 mph winds, and with a width of 150 yards, hit the Treasure Coast International Airport and several communities in Fort Pierce.
"There were trees down, homes that were damaged, nothing more urgent than that," Gerdes said.
"Then all of the sudden, we got word that there was another tornado approaching Kings (Highway) and Indrio (Road), and it moved very fast," Gerdes said. "We had little time to react. I looked down the feeder route, and that tornado was coming, I could see it, it was just something I've never seen before, you hear about it, you read about it, but to actually experience it was quite traumatic. It was almost an out-of-body experience, honestly."
That tornado was what has since become known as the Spanish Lakes tornado.
The twister, an EF3, churned through Fort Pierce with 155 mph winds and a width of 500 yards.
Region St Lucie County
Names of 6 Spanish Lakes tornado victims released
It continued for more than 21 miles, hitting communities in Vero Beach and North Hutchinson Island, but not before the massive system tore through Spanish Lakes, picking up mobile homes and taking the lives of six people.
"Tornado! Tornado! Get inside, right now! Get inside!" Gerdes is heard yelling at drivers in his body camera footage obtained by WPTV. "Tornado, right there, that's it, right there. Huge. Huge. Coming over the horizon, right there! We gotta go!"
He said his training helped him to react to the situation.
"It just kind of kicked in, you know, we're trained to be first responders, and I pretty much told everybody we gotta vacate that area," Gerdes said. "I could feel the wind circling around my body, and it's something I've never felt before, and just the sound was just eerie. It was just eerie."
Gerdes said as he was traveling back southbound on the feeder route. A fellow deputy had made it inside of Spanish Lakes and called out that he needed some assistance.
"There were some bodies down, people trapped and I was second, third on scene," Gerdes said.
Gerdes said he went into the development and almost immediately found the Alonsos' mobile home at 33 Rio De Palmas.
Drone footage showed the mobile home was picked up and thrown across the street.
Gerdes said when he got there, he immediately saw Alonso was killed in the tornado.
"And I happened to be talking to some neighbors, and they said, 'Well, he had a girlfriend that was somebody else with him,'" Gerdes said.
Two of those neighbors were Aurea Luna and Sao Canariato — who after riding out the tornado in their bathroom — came out to see the damage.
"I guess it hit and [Alonso] went in the house to [Viramontez]," Luna said. [The tornado] lifted the house, it threw him on the ground. I saw him. He was gone. And [Viramontez] was in the house. Over here in the back."
"And we were like, 'OK, where do we start?'" Gerdes said. "It was so devastating. What part of the structure do we start looking in and we, I think it actually was a neighbor that actually found her."
Gerdes said when they found Viramontez, she was buried under so much debris only the top of her head was visible.
"I was talking to her, telling her to hold on," Gerdes recalled. "She said she couldn't breathe. We cleared the debris around her enough that I was able to kind of get someone underneath her. And we stopped. And the reason why we stopped is because the steel beam that supports the trailer had flipped up over. She was inside the trailer, and the whole thing had come down on top of her, and it was going across her lower back. So there was no way that we were able to free her. All we could do was try to comfort her."
Gerdes said he kept talking to Viramontez as rescue personnel tried to get heavy equipment to the scene to free her.
"Due to the overwhelming debris on the roadway, the chaos and everything, they got to the scene too late. She had... she had passed away," Gerdes recalled somberly. "This was a situation — the first time in my entire career — that I became helpless, that I was unable to help her ... but knowing that I was there for her till the end and other deputies that we were there with her, and she didn't die alone."
Gerdes said after the storm, as he was on detail outside the community, a woman drove up and said she was there because one of her family members had died.
"I asked who it was, and they told me her name was Mary, and I asked her to pull over on the side of the road, and I communicated with her, told her who I was, and I said I'd be willing to share my story with you so you can have some closure," Gerdes said.
"And as much as it was for them, it was for me too. I was able to kind of ... get some closure to my situation," Gerdes continued.
Viramontez's family wasn't the only one Gerdes was able to provide closure to.
As he was tending to Viramontez, Gerdes said a young man had walked across an adjacent canal into the Spanish Lakes community.
"He came across and he said, 'I'm sorry to bother you, sorry to bother you. I was on the phone with my grandfather, and I just heard a boom, and I'm trying to get to him, I'm trying to get to him.' And I was like, 'Absolutely, come on, come over.' So he came over, and he disappeared into the darkness."
That young man was Victor Linero, Alejandro Alonso's grandson, who Hussey interviewed days after the tornado ripped through the area.
"The whole day we were on and off the phone with [Alonso] because we had plans, an evacuation plan, in case the hurricane was tracking south," Linero said. "There was one tornado that went through the trailer park, he FaceTimed me right after, showed me damage. We hung up, we were like, 'Alright, things were getting serious.'"
Linero said soon after that call, he saw a meteorologist show Lakewood Park Estates on the radar.
"I called [my grandfather] back, I said, 'Take shelter, take shelter,' I started screaming," Linero said. "He started screaming, he screamed, 'Ahh, oh my God!' then I heard a big explosion. And then I heard just wind — silence. I got in my car and I took off."
Linero said as soon as he crossed into the park's property, he walked around his grandfather's neighbor's house and instead saw an empty lot where his grandfather's house was.
"That confirmed it for me that he was gone," Linero said.
"And I started talking to [Linero], and I said, 'Did your grandfather have somebody with him tonight?" Gerdes asked. "And he said, 'Yes ... her name was Mary.' And I just couldn't believe it that I was with Mary, saw him come across. And I said, 'Well, I can, I can take you to your grandfather.'"
"He escorted me to his body. And that's where I was able to say my final goodbye," Linero said. "I wasn't supposed to say goodbye. I was supposed to say let's go to my house. But it was goodbye."
Linero said his grandfather raised him.
"I say grandpa, but he was a dad. He was my dad. He gave away the last 26 years of his life to raise me, take care of me, and I was trying to do the same for him. That's why I was trying to get to him," Linero told Hussey as his voice broke as he choked back emotion.
Alonso was an Army veteran who Linero said also worked at the U.S. Postal Service for more than 30 years.
"He was serving the community for a long time, either bringing them their paychecks, bringing them smiles," Linero said. "Truth be told, this isn't...this isn't real, this is a nightmare. And I'm sure for everybody else experiencing the same thing, too."
"You start recapping what occurred to the point where you don't sleep and you don't think straight, you're not as you're not as motivated, and that that did occur," added Gerdes. "It just takes the people around you, the talking about it is helping me about the situation, because if we don't share, we don't release that. It bundles up inside of us."
Yet amid so much loss and devastation comes a glimmer of hope: Alonso and Viramontez's dogs, which were rescued from the rubble.
Click here to read our story honoring Alonso's memory.
