There are always tornadoes spawned ahead of the hurricane by the rotations. What was unusual was that usually they are weak, EF 0 or so. Mlton had EF 3 tornadoes and a lot of them.

Back in the 60s in one of the big ones we had a micro tornado shoot right between our house and next door.
Ripped trees and roof tiles right down the line.

One was. very close to me during Irma

Hurricanes are very low pressure turbulent systems. and just like eddies in rivers, usually occur along the edges where the winds encounter some kind of obstacle. Most of these tend to get disrupted before they become large enough to build a centralized "eye", but with a high strength storm, these eddies are spun off rapidly enough that they gain a certain degree of cohesion. It's usually these, rather than straight wind from the hurricane itself, that does so much damage to roofs.