Picking up the pieces after the storm
Century home has little damage after tree branch fell on its roof
Gaby Mekinda was sitting in her living room Sunday night when she heard a crash and felt the home shake. Then she got a text from her third-floor tenant: “We’re OK, don’t worry, a tree has fallen on the roof.”
“If something out of the ordinary happens they immediately text,” said Mekinda, who owns the house at Wychwood Park and Davenport Rd. She and her husband, Mel, live on the main floor and rent out the second and third floors. “First I thought the furnace exploded. I looked out all the windows and I couldn’t see anything. Then the texts started coming in.”
A branch had fallen on the century home during the ice storm that wreaked havoc across southern Ontario last weekend. In Toronto, the storm downed powers lines and left 44,000 customers without hydro at its peak. City crews responded to 3,115 calls for assistance with tree damage, leaving many homeowners now facing cleanup headaches.
A tenant of Mekinda’s, Ken Wilcox, first posted about the branch’s collapse Monday evening, after the worst of the storm began to clear. “My wife and I and our two girls live on the top floor of this big old house,” Wilcox wrote on Twitter.
“We love living up in the treetops, but last night was a little scary when this massive branch broke free and crashed onto our roof.”
That night, after bringing her tenants safely downstairs into her living room, Mekinda phoned police and asked for her home’s stability to be inspected. Police and fire came to her home and reassured her the house was safe. All in all, the crash caused some cracks in a thirdfloor wall.
The branch that fell onto the thirdstorey roof was so large that a crane was used to lift it off during the removal process on Tuesday, said Al Miley, the owner of Al Miley and Associates, contracted with the tree’s removal. The home’s age added to the difficulty removing stray branches, due to the property’s layout and steep roof.
“Wychwood Park is a unique neighbourhood,” he said. “I was here for an hour assessing this, to figure out how we’re going to do this.”
The branch that fell onto the third-storey roof was so large that a crane was used to lift it off
Miley said he typically aims to save a tree that has suffered broken limbs.
When the “weakest link” of the tree breaks, arborists assess to see if the tree could stay standing for another 40 or 50 years, he said. In this case, the Mekinda’s tree will likely be saved.
In a joint statement to the Star, Mayor John Tory and Public Works chair Jaye Robinson said they were listening to residents’ frustrations with the cleanup efforts and “have raised those concerns with city staff.”
“We have directed them to deploy all available resources and to secure additional resources to help deal with the remnants of this storm as quickly as possible,” the statement said.
“Transportation crews have been working 24/7 since Friday to deal with the storm and its aftermath. It was crucially important to focus on the risk of flooding first.
“Since that risk has now subsided crews are entirely focused on removing remaining ice buildup on sidewalks and local roads across the city including Etobicoke, North York and Scarborough.”
Mekinda, who is long familiar with the Wychwood Park area, said this incident didn’t come as a surprise.
Mekinda’s mother purchased the home in 1961 and, after her mother’s death, Mekinda and her husband moved into the home in 2011.
“Living in Wychwood Park, there’s so many trees. A lot of them are very old. The trees are checked regularly, but you can never tell. If it’s bad wind or ice even a healthy tree can fall.”
While they’ve had branches come down around their property before, she said it’s never been to the extent they saw this weekend. Her biggest fear is that a branch one day falls and hurts someone, she said.
The fallen branch and the chaos it brought with it was all that Mekinda could think about Sunday evening.
“I didn’t sleep all night, I thought the tree was going to go through the roof or roll off,” Mekinda said.