Winds deliver a wallop
If the old Norway spruce was going to fall, it couldn’t have picked a more convenient place to land.
Walter Bouw and his wife Dolores were in the den of their Third Avenue home in west St. Catharines when high winds sent the 30-metre-tall tree in their yard crashing to the ground.
“It really shook us up for a second,” Bouw said.
“It was a bang. The floor even shook.”
At 150 years old, the tree was a survivor, still standing after a lightning strike a few years back. But on Wednesday, winds greater than 100 km/h did it in.
Luckily, the tree landed to the left of the house, avoiding injuring the couple or causing damage to the building, driveway or anything else on the property.
“It fell perfect,” Bouw said. “It couldn’t have fallen in a better place.”
A homeowner on Geneva Street south of Scott wasn’t as fortunate. A large evergreen was uprooted and toppled over onto the roof.
And on Bunting Road north of Welland Avenue, a large section of the roof of the Royal Court plaza was ripped off and landed on parked vehicles.
Environment Canada said winds hit 104 km/h in St. Catharines and peaked at 3 p.m.
By 5 p.m., they had slowed to 69 km/h.
Meteorologist David Rodgers said gusts in the region were strongest between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.
The Wednesday wind storm knocked over trees and hydro poles and caused intermittent power outages throughout Niagara.
Fire dispatch received twice as many calls than usual.
Emergency crews across the region were busy, dealing with such things as a snapped hydro pole on Canborough Road in West Lincolnand power lines blocking Niagara Stone Road in Niagara-onthe-Lake.
“It’s reminiscent of a wind storm back in 2011. We’re seeing a lot of trees being blown and poles are snapping,” said Brodie Mosher of Niagara-onthe-Lake Hydro, which had about 200 customers out at 4 p.m. and others back online.
He said crews were working as fast as they could but some businesses closed early because of the uncertainty of power outages.
St. Catharines had small outages across the city and fared better than Hamilton, according to hydro provider Alectra, formerly Horizon Utilities. Spokesman John Friesen said less than 1,000 customers in St. Catharines were affected. Most of the outages were resolved in an hour or two.
Drivers had to deal with some road blocks and signals out. The QEW’s Garden City Skyway over
the Welland Canal was closed for more than an hour due to high winds, jamming up alternate routes through St. Catharines.
The Niagara River Lions pushed their game start at Meridian Centre back a half-hour Wednesday night due to the traffic and weather problems.
The basketball team was playing host to Orangeville.
St. Catharines Fire and Emergency Services platoon chief Dave Upper said its communications room, which dispatches for Niagara municipalities except Niagara Falls, normally receives 30 to 40 calls in 24 hours. On Wednesday, it received more than 100 calls. More than 30 of those were in St. Catharines.
Most calls were hydro-related due to the wind storm. The roof of the plaza at 300 Bunting Rd. was the largest damage of the day.
Upper said damage was estimated at more than $100,000 to the building after the wind blew the roofing material off its concrete slab. That estimate doesn’t include the wreckage to nearby parked vehicles owned by residents and employees of the building. “Most of the cars were damaged from debris that came off the roof,” he said.
Niagara Regional Police Const. Phil Gavin said officers were out across the region assisting with directing traffic at intersections where the lights were out. He said intersections where there is no one directing should always be treated as a four-way stop.
He also wanted to remind the public to stay away from downed powerlines.
Fortunately, there were no known wind-related injuries reported in the region.
A wind warning from Environment Canada ended just before 6:30 p.m.