City in cleanup mode after wind storm
The city was still cleaning up Wednesday after a massive wind storm hit the city, knocking down trees, cutting power and sparking fires on Tuesday night.
Officials with the city’s electric utility said widespread damage included 38 line poles snapping and though the power is restored, repairs will continue well into next week.
“It all had the root cause of high wind; poles breaking off, lines coming down and a lot of broken trees,” said Jeff Sandford, the city’s manager of electrical distribution, who said crews were dispatched to 500 locations over an 18-hour period to secure lines or repair damage.
At its worst, 11,500 addresses had no power, though all but about 25 saw service restored by 4 p.m. Wednesday.
The damage to the power grid is the worst in recent memory, and “much worse” than a wind storm that hit the city in June 2015, according to Sandford,
In that storm damage was heavy, but more localized within several communities.
“This (storm) happened all over the city and our service area — Redcliff and into rural areas — all at the same time creating a lot of unsafe conditions,” said Sandford.
“Before we could even get the power on we had a lot of downed lines to deal with before we could begin the restoration process.”
The city has hired a private contractor to help with reconnection on Tuesday and also has an offer of City of Lethbridge power crews to come assist in this city, said Sandford.
A local state of emergency was enacted at 10 p.m. after officials began monitoring heavy wind gusts in the afternoon and opened the city’s emergency operations centre at 7 p.m.
The storm caused problems across Alberta and forced evacuations of large portions of northern Cypress County, the hamlet of Hilda, Schular and towns across the provincial boundary in Saskatchewan. Elsewhere evacuations in Gleichen, the Crowsnest Pass and Airdrie were also put in place.
In Medicine Hat, crews only began gaining ground on a flurry of damage reports after the winds died down after midnight, said Merrick Brown, the city’s manager of emergency response.
“We had damage throughout the city and quite a bit of damage (to utility lines) in Redcliff — downed trees, downed lines,” said Brown. “We’ve built a recovery plan that will be handled at the departmental level.”
Brown predicted the state of emergency would be lifted in the late afternoon, meaning high level co-ordination of city resources wouldn’t be required.
Beyond dealing with power outages and school closures in Redcliff, mostly Hatters spent the day cleaning up and marvelling at the big wind.
Several homes on the Southeast Hill and in Crescent Heights were blanketed by huge trees that tipped over.
More throughout the city were leaning precariously, marked off with tape, awaiting tree-cutting crews that were busy throughout the day.
Gus Clairmont had watched the storm develop out the front window of his home on 11th Street SE during the evening.
“It was getting really wild,” said Clairmont on Wednesday morning. “I was looking at the neighbour’s tree thinking ‘there’s no way that’s going over,’ but I turned my back and my girlfriend yelled, “It’s coming down!’”
The huge blue spruce lurched over to rest on his roof with thick, bushy branches splashing against the picture window.
There is damage to his eaves and chimney, but Clairmont was thankful damage wasn’t worse.
The winds locally measured above 100 kilometres per hour began knocking off power to some communities in the early evening on Tuesday.
Fire crews dealt with a grassfire in high winds near the Maple Avenue bridge in Riverside. Police and road crews as well responded to blocked streets and warned Hatters to remain indoors overnight.
At its height, 11,000 utility customers — about 20 per cent of homes — were without power, though most was restored within hours.
By 10 a.m. Tuesday, about 2,200 addresses remained without power, and service was restored to Redcliff and areas south of Echodale Regional Park in the afternoon.