OTTAWA — The remnants of torn-down fences, blown out windows and torn off roofs littered a far south Ottawa neighborhood Thursday after a tornado struck with little warning.
After the skies cleared, families sat on their porches to watch downed poles and uprooted trees as emergency services and hydro personnel worked to clear debris and restore power.
While residents described themselves as shaken and stressed, there were no deaths or serious injuries.
Environment Canada confirmed that at least one tornado had hit the Ottawa area just after noon Thursday in Half Moon Bay, a neighborhood in the suburb of Barrhaven.
Later Thursday, he confirmed a tornado also touched down in Mirabel, Que., north of Montreal. He said no injuries or damage have been reported.
Another as-yet-unconfirmed tornado is suspected to have struck an area with no built-up infrastructure southwest of Montreal in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Quebec, also causing no damage.
In Barrhaven, some 125 homes were damaged, said Kim Ayotte, general manager of emergency and protective services for the city of Ottawa.
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He told reporters late in the afternoon that most of the damage was from roofs torn off houses, broken windows and damage from falling trees.
“It’s a range of damage, from small damage to quite substantial damage,” he said.
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He said only one minor injury had been reported involving someone sustaining a cut foot.
Monica Vaswani, warning preparedness meteorologist at Environment Canada, said several funnel clouds were reported in the Ottawa area on Thursday afternoon, but only one tornado had been confirmed by mid-afternoon.
The community is located about 22 kilometers south of Parliament Hill, on the southern edge of the rapidly growing city. The area includes single-family homes and townhomes built in recent years.
Vaswani said the tornado was confirmed through videos posted on social media showing debris “lifting up and spinning.”
An expert with the Northern Tornadoes Project at Western University in London, Ontario, is heading to the area to help determine the speed of the tornado, he said.
Laurie Gillespie said the canadian press that his 82-year-old mother and sister were at the home they share on Watercolors Way when his sister noticed a storm coming and went outside to pull up a chair so it wouldn’t blow away.
“Just as she went back inside, the back window exploded and the screen went flying across the room and landed at my mother’s feet,” Gillespie said.
The house, which Helen Feltham has lived in for three years, sustained significant damage. Windows in the living room, bathroom and bedroom were blown out, scattering glass everywhere, while much of the roof was torn off.
“The curtains on the bathroom window were sucked up and ended up on the ceiling,” said Gillespie, who was not home at the time.
She said she lives about 15 minutes away and drove as soon as she got the call that the storm had occurred. When she got there, the streets were already awash with emergency personnel and even a representative of the developer who is building houses in the neighborhood.
She was comforting her mother, holding her close and gently telling her that it was over.
“She’s extremely shaken up,” said Gillespie, who brought her mother from the area to her own home.
Gillespie said there is damage in a two to three block radius around his mother’s house. Some roofs were breached and foam blocks used as insulation in the attics exploded.
“It was literally snowing Styrofoam outside,” he said.
There were also many downed trees and some damaged hydroelectric poles in the area.
Nearby streets Merak Way and Umbra Place were also in disrepair on Thursday afternoon.
Deepak Singh, who has a rental property on Merak Way, said he will have to relocate a family with two children while damage to the house is repaired.
He speculated that repairs could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Between losing rent, insurance deductibles and paying for temporary housing for his tenants, he said he expects to lose something like $10,000 in the immediate future.
“It’s very stressful,” Singh said. “But the people are safe.”
On Wednesday, Environment Canada had warned that Thursday’s weather could raise the possibility of severe thunderstorms that could produce tornadoes. At 12:28 p.m., the weather agency issued a tornado warning for a large swath of eastern Ontario.
Gillespie said the tornado hit his mother’s house sometime between 12:30 and 12:45 p.m.
The emergency alerts were issued over the cell phone network at around 12:49 p.m.
Ottawa police asked people to avoid the Barrhaven area and stay away from downed power lines. Firefighters and workers from the Enbridge Gas Company were visiting affected homes, surveying the damage, confirming the safety of the occupants and shutting off the gas lines.
Ayotte said the gas lines were shut down for safety reasons, but there were no reports of gas leaks.
Hydro Ottawa said on Twitter that more than 1,600 homes and businesses were without power as of Thursday afternoon. He said power to the neighborhood was expected to be restored by 7 p.m. ET.
A family reunification center was set up at a nearby recreation complex, but by late afternoon only five families had taken advantage of it. The city said it would stay open as needed, including overnight if needed by affected residents.
Police and reporters took shelter there when a second tornado warning was issued for the area around 2:45 p.m., but no further tornadoes were detected.
Ottawa has been affected by a series of severe storms in recent years. In September 2018, six tornadoes touched down in various locations in the Ottawa area and across the river in Gatineau, Quebec.
Dozens of houses were damaged and 25 people were injured. A tornado struck a city power plant knocking out power to about half of the city’s homes, some for several days.
In May 2022, the city was hit hard by a derecho, a long, straight line of storms with winds often exceeding 100 km/h, damaging dozens of homes and downing power lines like matchsticks. Power outages again spread across large swaths of the city with some not being restored for several weeks.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on July 13, 2023.
— With files from Thomas MacDonald and Stéphane Blais