Sahneddiya Payne looked at the massive oak tree inside her Apopka home Sunday morning and marveled to be alive.
The 33-year-old single mother of four was home Saturday night with two of her kids, her boyfriend and four other people when the tree crashed through the wall and roof amid a fierce, unexpected storm and came to rest atop a dresser just feet away.
The same storm generated a tornado that ravaged a nearby apartment complex.
“I haven’t had a chance to breathe,” Payne said as an electric saw buzzed outside.
She had been in the two-bedroom house for only a month.
Payne had been a resident of the decrepit, rat-infested Hawthorne Village public-housing complex in South Apopka that was vacated because of health and safety concerns.
When she found the small rental house on West 8th Street, Payne was thrilled. It wasn’t much: a former crack house with no carpets, no drywall and no electricity. But with the help of family and friends, she fixed up the place, hung her children’s pictures on the wall and called it home, even with holes in the floorboards.
On Sunday, she was still in disbelief about what had happened. The tree had come crashing through the front of the house, severely damaging the roof, busting windows and taking part of a wall.
“I just put $2,000 into this house,” Payne said. “I can’t believe it.”
Payne, who works as many as 77 hours a week at a dry cleaner, where she presses clothes to make ends meet, does not have renters insurance.
“I just don’t know what will happen,” she said.
