FORT PIERCE — A dog rescued Thursday morning from the rubble of a home hit by a passing tornado Hurricane Milton in a retirement home, with some help from a CBS News Miami crew, is reunited with family.

A resident found Lulu the Shih Tzu at the Spanish Lakes Country Club Village, a 55-and-older retirement community near Fort Pierce.

CBS News Miami reporter Morgan Rynor ​​was on the scene while appearing live on “CBS Mornings” when the pet was found.

A neighbor who found the dog in the rubble initially confused her with another pup in the retirement community named Benji, who was actually safe with its owners.

“I can’t believe I’m starting this off with happy news,” Rynor ​​said during the morning segment.

“He’s got Benji. He’s got Benji. Oh my god,” she continued, seconds after the neighbor found the dog.

Lulu went missing Wednesday night after tornadoes hit the community. On Thursday, the dog was taken to a vet for a check-up and treated for skin infections.

Two people in the house died, the neighbor told CBS News Miami.

Victor Linero, who lives in Indian River County, later confirmed to CBS News Miami that his grandfather, Alejandro Alonso, and the man’s girlfriend, Mary Grace Viramontez, were the owners of the 14-year-old dog. Linero becomes the dog’s new owner.

Lulu has a sibling, a Rotweiller named Shiba, who was also in the house at the time. The family thought the other dog did not survive, but later Thursday they received a call that Shiba had been found alive.

Following her report on “CBS Mornings,” Rynor ​​said, “My photographer Brian (Shanahan) heard faint barking in the distance and our thoughts immediately went to the worst.”

“We said, there’s no way there’s a dog in the huge pile of rubble behind us,” she said.

“Even though we were about two minutes away from our 7:30 live taping, we decided Benji was more important,” Rynor ​​said.

“So we ran to the pile of rubble,” she said. “We started looking and then one of the neighbors came over and the neighbor said, ‘He knows Benji.'”

The neighbor started calling Benji’s name and Lulu seemed to recognize the voice.

The dog was wrapped in a blanket.

The couple was among them six people died after it spawned two tornadoes Hurricane Milton ended up at the pension community.

“This is like nothing else we’ve seen,” Sheriff Keith Pearson told CBS affiliate WPEC.

He said 12 confirmed high-strength tornadoes tore through the area within 20 minutes.

More than 100 personnel, including from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Florida Highway Patrol, National Guard and the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission, responded to the scene. Some went door to door in the community conducting search and rescue operations.

They halted their search and rescue operation overnight due to poor weather conditions, but resumed the search in the morning.

“Everything we can do is being done to search the area. Check the homes and if there is anyone in the homes we are going to work through the storm to get them out,” Pearson said.