{"id":380305,"date":"2026-08-25T03:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T03:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/380305\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T03:04:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T03:04:12","slug":"ef-0-tornado-tears-through-port-st-lucie-residents-clean-up-debris-and-damaged-structures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/380305\/","title":{"rendered":"EF-0 tornado tears through Port St. Lucie, residents clean up debris and damaged structures"},"content":{"rendered":"

Port St. Lucie residents spent Monday cleaning up after a storm tore through the area Sunday night<\/a>, leaving behind damaged structures, debris-filled pools and downed foliage.<\/p>\n

The National Weather Service determined it was an EF-0 tornado<\/a>, with 65-75 mph winds.<\/p>\n

WATCH BELOW: Port St. Lucie tornado: 75 mph winds leave trail of damage<\/p>\n

Aron Christiansen spent the morning pulling debris out of his pool after already retrieving furniture from the bottom. Video from a neighbor’s camera captured the moment his patio broke apart during the storm. Half of the patio is now out on the curb, set to be salvaged for recycling.<\/p>\n

“I looked out the windows last night, saw a bunch of debris flying. I thought it was birds at first; they were white, [so I] thought they might be ibises. [I looked] closer, and there’s debris, and had about 10 seconds before it hit our house,” Christiansen said.<\/p>\n

Janelle Pierre-Louis said she was surprised by the amount of damage to her backyard foliage after dealing with damage at the front of her house first.<\/p>\n

“My front door caved in; our door is kind of old. Dirt came through the cracks. It was a hot mess,” Pierre-Louis said. “We’ve got to clean up and start all over.”<\/p>\n

Around the corner, Mitch Brewer had debris piled out front \u2014 most of it from a shed he had tied down.<\/p>\n

“It looks like it caught some heavy updrafts and left,” Brewer said.<\/p>\n

Brewer said he had been thinking about demolishing the old shed at some point, but Mother Nature beat him to it. He said living in the mid-South made him familiar with tornadoes.<\/p>\n

Florida sees about 65 to 70 tornadoes a year, according to the Florida Climate Center, and has a higher frequency per 10,000 square miles than any other state, including Oklahoma.<\/p>\n

Marlene Torres was in a good mood Sunday night before returning home to find the storm had moved through her neighborhood.<\/p>\n

“I had just come back from Jensen Beach celebrating my birthday, which is today,” Torres said. “I came home and witnessed the tornado.”<\/p>\n

Her home was not damaged, but she needed an electrician to fix her meter.<\/p>\n

“I’m the only one with no electricity because my power was more damaged than other folks in the area, so that is the situation, but I can’t complain; it could be worse,” Torres said.<\/p>\n

Monday, August 24, is also the anniversary of Hurricane Andrew. Torres said she was living in Miami when the historic hurricane hit the region.<\/p>\n

“You can’t compare Andrew to this. It was life-altering for the longest time. The repairs took months and months and months,” Torres said.<\/p>\n

Torres said she is thankful not to have to go through that again.<\/p>\n

“Here I am picking up sticks and stones,” Torres said while laughing.<\/p>\n

This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Port St. Lucie residents spent Monday cleaning up after a storm tore through the area Sunday night, leaving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[171,173,172],"class_list":["post-380305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}