The National Weather Service in Jacksonville said they messed up Saturday when a tornado tore through the city of Ocala. Many homes and businesses were damaged and destroyed. Yet residents and county leaders say they didn’t receive any emergency alert, and the NWS hadn’t issued a Tornado warning.

Many businesses in the area no longer have a roof or even windows to keep open. They said they only received a warning about 10 minutes after the tornado hit.

Florida native David Gil spends his days working on cars. It was at his work when Gil felt the rain and wind pick up. He looked out the window and couldn’t believe his eyes.

“I was thinking it was just a little wind and water. I guess it just landed right on top of us. A bunch of wind and a bunch of water. I’ve never been through a tornado before. I didn’t know how to act. So we just ran into the safe place,” said Gil.

Gil said the storm went quick. But the damage stuck around.

“As soon as it cleared up, we walked outside to see the damage. Branches, leaves, styrofoam everywhere, branches fell on some vehicles, destroyed the headlight on one of my boss’ antique cars. Destroyed the bumper on one of my buddy’s cars, which is a Honda Accord. It was rough,” said Gil.

Spectrum News 13’s severe weather experts were live tracking the storm Saturday morning warning people in the storm's path to take shelter.

“I’m surprised we don’t have a warning in place, even a severe thunderstorm warning, but Ocala, be in your safe place. You know, we’re looking up at the top of the radar but still getting indications of rotation. Bright greens going toward the radar and it’s skewing toward the red here right over Ocala with that rotation,” said Bryan Karrick.

After seeing the damage, Gil and his buddies said these types of storms are no joke.

“My mindset has definitely changed. If I see something about a tornado, I’m gonna take it a little bit more seriously,” said Gil.

The National Weather Service said their Jacksonville radar was down for maintenance. While they did send out a tornado watch at 3 a.m., their backup radar was unable to track rotation of the storm and failed to issue a warning.

“This is the time of year where folks have multiple ways to receive warnings, whether it’s the local news app, with a broadcast meteorologist giving them alerts, folks signing up for the county emergency alerts,” said Ben Nelson, meteorologist for the National Weather Service..

That radar maintenance in Jacksonville is expected to continue for another week. You can get live severe weather updates as they happen on our Spectrum News 13 app.