The Pensacola News from Pensacola, Florida • 2

Asked 'Help From Anybody' First Mm ot Sceee 'Heir Finndls jt A 1 1 Fred Brown "They were screaming for help. And I was calling for help from anybody. "It looked like all hell had broken loose," said Sanders, who had been with the Gulf Breeze force for a year. In fact, Sanders was due for a pay raise Sunday, but that's the tough way to get it. "Most of the people could walk, so I began going up into the apartments," Sanders said.

"There were quite a few bleeding from cuts, but none lookel too serious," he said. "Cars were overturned and tossed about." Everywhere were toys and pieces of furniture. Walls the apartments looked as though they had taken heavy shelling. Holes were biased into the sides of the walls from flying debris. Metal lay in twisted hunks.

And early Sunday morning, a few short hours after the pillage, a bird began chirping in the swampy area behind the apartments. Chirping in the footprint of a tornado. In the rear of English Cove Apartments in Gulf Breeze there is a swampy area. It's covered with moss and aging oaks. Where once there was growth there are now footprints of a tornado, a hellish wind that whipped through the apartment complex and into the swamp like some huge animal on rampage.

Individual apartments were smashed into cement dust the devastating wind set down at 4:15 a.m. Sunday Windows were blown out as if an explosion had been set off inside what once were friendly family apartments. Clothes hang on trees and resemble vermicelli. Silver window screens dance on tree limbs. Fingers of grass are nailet! to the walls inside the apartments.

Walls were ripped out and floors caved in. And people were flung out mto the ground to greet the tornado as it began its dam3.ri.ng march through English Cove. Oaks were cut down effortlessly, or snapped off as the tornado, tint will become Gulf Breeze's worst natural disaster, its way through the apartments, into the swamp and -r. cross the street into beachfront cottages. No cne in the apartments seemed to know where the tornado came from.

Most were asleep. About 4:12 a.m. Gulf Breeze Police Sgt. Malcolm Sanders was heading east across the Pensacola Bay Bridge. "The wind darn near blew me off the bridge," said the serge nt, the first man to arrive at the scene.

"When I got there I could see people lying in a ditch. i rs uL, i Front fieerisacola (New econ 2A POLICE SGT. MALCOLM SANDERS first to arrive on tornado scene Monday, February 8, 1971 1 i rr: ..1 -A I A HELP CAME IN A HURRY TO HELP GULF BREEZE TORNADO VICTIMS ambulances and police cars from throughout the Pensacola area line up 4fffrMaa W0. WIND DRIVES 2x4 THROUGH ASONRY WALL DURING TORNADO only one of many indicators of the force of the winds that struck Gulf Breeze 'till iftu IMF 11 DAMAGED AUTOMOBILES STREWN ABOUT ENGLISH COVE PARKING LOT wind force moved automobiles, overturned them, and smashed them together Li wnm ft ft1 3. -Mi (Pensacola News photos by Ken Ross and Larry Parks) 'i a-- iisr Ml a.

IPO rtv -rc- THE WALLS CAME TUMBLING DOWN ALONG WITH EVERYTHING ELSE scene early Sunday morning reveals total devastation in tornado-hit homes TOW TRUCKS LINE UP TO REMOVE WRECKED AUTOMOBILES scores of vehicles were taken away for junking or major repairs 1 at1 I 5 4 iMh. I i. 4... ''v AA) 1 A A A l'X A wy I V-1. A (Si4- ilWWASf! fcf A AA'XA- AAi, "lSS NATIONAL GUARD CREWS HELP TO CLEAR DEBRIS THAT HINDERS RESCUERS the citizen soldiers were on the icene to clean op and prevent looting INJURED WOMAN TAKEN ABOARD A MBULANCE TO GET MEDICAL CARE over a hundred were Injured but no one died in the early morning disaster.