Tampa Warehouse Fire Sends Smoke Over Tornado-Stricken Progress Village, Greater Brandon

For Jennifer Milligan, the tower of black smoke billowing behind her mobile home in the Madison Lake Estates development, in the Progress Village area west of Greater Brandon, was more than just a curiosity.

What turned out to be, according to TBO.com, smoke from an April 2 warehouse fire at Electrical Engineering Enterprises, 6115 Hartford St., reminded Milligan of the tornado that struck her small neighborhood two days earlier.

As Greater Brandonites looked upon the smoke as a curiousity, Milligan and her husband and neighbors looked upon the blaze as a reminder of the horror that struck their lives out of the blue on the last day of March.

“It was horrifying and terrifying at the same time,” Milligan said April 2, walking in her neighborhood, on Dhanmandi Circle, to view the billowing smoke from what has been reported as a fire at Electrical Engineering Enterprises Inc., 6115 Hartford Street in Tampa.

Milligan was referring to the tornado that struck Progress Village on March 31, with reported damages to at least 25 homes in the area of 78th Street and Progress Village Boulevard, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.

Snapped trees, broken limbs, mangled gates and other signs of the savage storm were apparent April 2, as billowing smoke, thick and dark at the base, rose into the clear blue sky, becoming visible through the Tampa Bay area and especially so as it drifted east and across many sections of Greater Brandon.

Watching the smoke, Milligan and her husband, Brian, along with two neighbors, brother and sister Nicole and Ryan Sulzer, taked about their moments in the Milligan home during the March 31 tornado.

“I still can’t get it out of my head,” Ryan Sulzer said. “It still shakes me. I still can’t barely sleep, thinking about if another one is going to come.”

Jennifer Milligan was in the hallway with Nicole Sulzer when the tornado struck nearby; her husband and Ryan Sulzer were in other sections of the mobile home.

“The walls were shaking and it felt like the floor was coming up,” Jennifer Milligan said. “We were trying to hold on to something but there was nothing to hold on to, it happened so fast. It sounded like a freight train was coming up behind the house. Me and her [Nicole Sulzer] were standing in the hallway. She’s not helping any screaming, ‘I’m going to die! I’m going to die! I just started thinking, ‘I’m going to die. This is it.’ ”

Milligan said she believed the tornado struck four doors down from her home.

“Our front window shattered and all we could do was stand in the hallway, paralyzed in fear,” she said. “It’s something you see in a movie but you don’t know what it really feels like.”

Now she knows the feeling and so, too, her husband, who gave his own account of the day’s events in a few short words.

“I thought I was going to die,” he said.

“A lot of homes in the park got hit pretty bad,” Brian Milligan added. “But they’re all still standing.”