Pasco County residents are cleaning up after high winds caused property damage Friday afternoon.

  • Trees, awnings, outdoor sheds sent flying by winds
  • Seven homes suffered structural damage

"We were sitting in the living room watching tv and it went off and we hard a loud 'bang.' I thought it was lightning," said Gary VanDierendonk, who lives on Larch Court.
 
VanDierendonk said when he looked outside an aluminum shed from another home had blown into the side of his house, damaging his pool enclosure and landscaping.
 
"It tore my screen up on the side and broke a few pots but basically I was lucky," he said.
 
Across the street, a large metal awning from another home landed on the roof, sending a metal pole through the roof over the garage and denting a car.
 
Pasco County crews removed the metal awning and put up a tarp to prevent further damage.
 
"The rest of it is trees down on property, trees down across fences," said Kevin Guthrie, Emergency Services Director.
 
Jason Epp said a palm tree fell on top of his house.
 
"I was at work and received a phone call from my wife, frantic that a tree fell on the house, and I didn't know which tree but I envisioned the worst," he said.
 
Epp said the 40-foot palm tree busted some plywood, but there wasn't a hole in the roof and nothing was leaking, so he decided to fix it himself.
 
"We're basically going to take the limbs off that tree and we're going to carefully, as carefully as we can, remove that tree from the roof and then cut it up and send it to the dump," he said.
 
Emergency crews flew a helicopter through the neighborhood.
 
They found a total of 7 homes with some structural damage.
 
No injuries are being reported.