Perilous Times and Climate Change
Crews clean up after intense thunderstorm, tornado touches down in
Leamington, Ontario
at 19:33 on June 06, 2010, EDT.
The Canadian Press
LEAMINGTON, Ont. - An intense thunderstorm that ripped through a
southwestern Ontario community before daybreak on Sunday left dazed
residents scrambling to cope with tree-strewn streets, battered homes
and downed power lines.
Most of the damage was reported in Leamington, Ont. near Lake Erie,
where authorities declared a state of emergency just three hours after
a ferocious windstorm struck a strip of homes, sounding like a freight
train to some.
"Scary thing when you wake up at 3 a.m. in the morning, and I thought
how can I be hearing a train," said Marilyn Collard, as she described
the piercing noise of the storm.
"And that's what it sounded like, a train coming down the lake," she
said.
A team from Environment Canada said it looked like the area was hit by
a combination of a tornado and an equally strong windstorm called a
downburst.
For Collard and her family, it took a moment to recognize the jarring
noise.
"It hit me, 'oh my god, that is a tornado,'" she said.
Collard ran and grabbed her husband and son, and just as they reached
the top of the steps to the basement, the windows exploded, whipping
around debris, dirt, and shingles from the neighbour's roof.
"I would never want to live through this again. Ever, Ever. It's the
sound. When you start hearing trees snapping ... that is just scary,"
said Collard.
The damage to some areas looked like a bomb had exploded, said Anne
Miskovsky, an emergency communications officer.
Power outages were widespread and crews worked feverishly to restore
electricity, but by late afternoon, Miskovsky said some residents would
be without power for days.
However, most phones were working by mid-afternoon.
The storm started building late Saturday night as Environment Canada
issued several tornado warnings for the area throughout the night and
into the early morning hours of Sunday.
The largest stretch of damage ran for about three kilometres.
"Huge trees are severed down the middle and are laying on top of the
roads or houses. Hydro poles have been sheared in half and are just
lying here," said Miskovsky , as she tried to paint a picture of the
wreckage.
Miskovsky said the next step for the community will be to assess the
extent of the damages, as people begin to contact their insurance
companies.
The hardest hit area may have been Seacliff Drive, a large street near
the lake. Some residents said it looked like bulldozers had clear cut
the area.
John Gleason, 21, was out of breath Sunday afternoon, as he and his
friends hauled downed trees off his property.
He woke up that morning to see green lightening flashing across the
sky, and watched as winds uprooted a tree, crashing it into his car and
his sister's car.
Gleason lives next door to the police chief, whose camping trailer was
totalled by a tree. He said a crane would have to be brought in to take
the tree off the roof.
"It's just devastation," said Gleason "everything is brutalized." He
said, using only one word to describe the area near the beach, "toast."
"I had a 100-year-old spruce that is gone," said Collard, about the
majestic, 18-metre-high high wonder, now snapped in half.
Collard's neighbour had his roof fly off. On Sunday, morning it sat
squarely on the top of her house. Another neighbour had his chimney
fall through the roof and land on his bed. No one was in the room at
the time.
Trucks have turned over onto nearby million-dollar greenhouses, said
Collard.
The Red Cross opened up an emergency shelter for people affected by the
storm.
There were no reports of serious injuries.
"We've had minor injuries, but nothing major or critical," said Sarah
Padfield, a spokeswoman for Leamington District Memorial Hospital.
However Alina Wall, who walked around her community Sunday, saw
ambulances darting in and out of the area.
Environment Canada said it's team had been studying the worst of the
damage along a two kilometre swath that looked like it was struck by
first a tornado and then a downburst.
"It is complicated, but it's reflecting what they're seeing," said
Peter Kimbell, a warning preparedness meteorologist for Environment
Canada.
A downburst is a powerful downward air current that, unlike a tornado,
doesn't rotate, but it can be just as deadly.
"It can do damage as significant as a tornado," said Kimbell.
The brief tornado has been ranked as an F1, which has winds of between
120 to 170 kilometres per hour.
A conclusive answer on what kind of weather wrecked havoc in Leamington
however, will likely only come on Monday.
South of the border a tornado unleashed chaos in northwest Ohio,
killing at least seven people and destroying dozens of homes as a line
of storms carved a path of destruction through the northern states.
Tornadoes also were reported in Illinois, Michigan and Indiana.
Kimbell said the Ontario storm was probably related to the intense
weather in the U.S.
"The timing was correct," he said. "It was a line of severe weather
that went through the northern United States, the northern tip of which
affected southwestern Ontario."
— By Ciara Byrne in Toronto