Powerful storm leaves trail of death and destruction in capital region

Powerful storm leaves trail of death and destruction in capital region - Ottawa Citizen

Two deaths were reported in Ottawa and Gatineau.

The Stittsville area and many other parts of the Ottawa region were hit by a powerful storm on Saturday, May 21, 2022. Firefighters run up Carleton Cathcart Street. Photo by Ashley Fraser /Postmedia

A line of violent thunderstorms brought strong winds and dumped rain across the national capital region on Saturday, killing two people and leaving a trail of widespread destruction.

The storms also left more than 170,000 customers without electricity across the city as of 7:30 p.m., according to Hydro Ottawa, representing about half of its customer base.

An Ottawa Police Service spokesperson reported the death of one person in the west end, though additional details were not provided pending notification of next of kin.

Two people were critically injured at separate golf courses, as was one person in a storm-related motor vehicle accident, Pierre Poirier, chief of the Ottawa Paramedic Service, said during an emergency media conference Saturday evening.

As well, a 51-year-old woman died after a boat capsized during the storm on the Ottawa River near Masson-Angers, Radio-Canada reported, citing Gatineau police.

The storm came from the west and hit the region with an abrupt combination of rain and wind.

Wind uprooted trees across the city. On Paul Anka Drive, near Hunt Club Road in the south end, it was almost more difficult to find a tree that was still firmly rooted in the ground than one that was not. A massive pine tree hit a house, shearing off part of its roof; another crushed a car.

Emergency vehicles were stretched thin across the city, so neighbours helped each other and used chainsaws to clear trees that were lying across the road.

"I was upstairs reading a book," said Jim Carney, whose house escaped mostly unscathed. "I heard the wind and three minutes after it was done. The sun came up and my son said, 'Dad, the trees are all down.' I said, 'What?'"

South of Hunt Club, on Uplands Drive, hydro poles were shorn in half and metal lamp posts were bent in two, presumably from the force of the wind.

In an online post in late afternoon, Ottawa Fire Services reported a tree down "on a patient" on Brigade Avenue between Cherry Drive and Sunnyside Drive in the Stittsville neighbourhood in the west end. Another Ottawa Fire post reported a silo collapse near Magladry Road in Navan.

Across the city, branches, water and sometimes entire trees blocked roads and slowed traffic, even on Highway 417 and Highway 174, as drivers avoided obstacles that had been blown into their paths.

Some of the tulip beds near Dow's Lake were devastated by the wind.

In Stittsville, one of the areas that felt the full brunt of the storm, first responders blocked off a section of Main Street after power lines and trees fell across the road. Shingles lay on the street, freshly shorn from roofs, and trees, some of them two storeys high, were uprooted.

Residents cleaning debris off their lawns and sidewalks described being hit by what some of them thought was a microburst or a low-grade tornado.

"It just came on quick," said one woman who gave her name as Bea. "I'm a little scared of thunder and lightning, but this was, 'holy crap.' You don't know what to do. Go in the basement? It was quite overwhelming."

A generator purred at Jo-jo's pizza, where people had flocked after becoming suddenly unable to cook dinner at home due to power outages.

"When (the wind) started to spin around the house, I put down our drapes so that, if anything hit the windows, it wouldn't come through … hopefully," Gail Stratton said. "It was definitely intense."

Chainsaws sounded as the cleanup got underway. Hydro workers scrambled to repair damaged lines and restore power, while cellphone service was spotty in affected areas.

Strangely, though, despite tossing everything from election campaign signs to fences, the wind spared some areas and items.

"I was waiting for my plants to fly off the hooks," Stratton said, pointing to rows of hanging plants nearby. "But they never did."

The storm hammered the town of Perth, tearing off shingles and toppling trees and branches and blocking several streets.

Innisville was also hit hard, with trees and branches littering Highway 7. Traffic slowed in one spot just west of Innisville, where a pine tree, its top blackened by an apparent lightning strike, smouldered and sent grey smoke drifting across the highway.

Nearby, a wooden hydro pole drooped crazily, pulling the wires taut. An Ontario Provincial Police officer used the cable and winch on his SUV to drag a heavy tree trunk blocking the westbound lanes off the road. Several barns appeared to have had their roofs peeled back by the wind, while roadside billboards lay flattened on the ground.

Paul McMahon (in a yellow hard hat) and his son Matt work to remove the enormous tree that crushed their new Honda in the driveway of their lizard Street home. Photo by Blair Crawford /Postmedia

In a summary of events, Ottawa police also listed:

• one barn destroyed in the west end;

• 40 vehicles stuck on Woodroffe Avenue due to downed power lines;

• a roof blown off a home in the west end;

• a gas leak on St. Joseph Boulevard in Orléans;

• a gas leak on Presland Road in Overbrook.

A powerful storm rolled through Ottawa Saturday, downing trees and flooding streets. Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia
Storm clouds roll over Ottawa's west end before the heavy thunderstorm hit the region on Saturday afternoon. Photo by Ashley Fraser /Postmedia
A huge tree came down in the storm on Saturday afternoon in the front yard of a house on Belmont Avenue near Bellwood Avenue in Old Ottawa South.  Photo by Jacquie Miller /Postmedia
A huge tree came down in the storm on Saturday afternoon in the front yard of a house on Belmont Avenue near Bellwood Avenue in Old Ottawa South. Photo by Jacquie Miller /Postmedia
A powerful storm rolled through Ottawa Saturday, downing trees and flooding streets. Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia
A powerful storm rolled through Ottawa Saturday, downing trees and flooding streets. Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia
A tree branch fell on the back shed roof of a house on Cameron Avenue in Old Ottawa South during the storm Saturday afternoon. Photo by Jacquie Miller /Postmedia
A tree branch fell on the back shed roof of a house on Cameron Avenue in Old Ottawa South during the storm Saturday afternoon. Photo by Jacquie Miller /Postmedia
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