‘Then I got home, and my whole life was gone’
Uxbridge residents pick up the pieces after deadly storm
Issam Bousraf stands before his totalled car, his apartment in ruins, thinking only of how he’ll get to work this week.
The powerful storm, the likes of which had not been seen in Ontario in decades, tore the roof off Bousraf’s home, blew apart nearby trees and punched through his windows.
Bousraf lives in Uxbridge, a town of 21,000 in Durham Region brought to its knees by the weekend derecho thunderstorm. The area was one of the worst affected in Ontario and Quebec, where the combined death toll from the storm has now risen to 10.
Power and phone service have still not been restored to much of Uxbridge. The tornado-grade winds dashed electrical infrastructure, bore a hole in a downtown church, collapsed part of a local brewery and caused an estimated $750,000 in damage to a historic railway, which is now soliciting donations to help with repairs.
Uxbridge declared a state of emergency in the wake of the storm. The harder-hit buildings, like Bousraf’s, were deemed unsafe “due to immediate danger to occupants,” according to the township, and residents were relocated with the help of the Red Cross.
Sunny skies darkened in an instant Saturday when the storm arrived in Uxbridge. Whipping winds and heavy rain started battering Bousraf’s window. He propped it open and thought, “This must be a tornado.”
“It took five seconds for it to rip the roof out,” he said. “The walls were leaking, windows shattered, light fixtures broken. It was really scary. Like a doomsday sequence.”
Glass was exploding around him, Bousraf said, and shingles from nearby roofs sailing through like shrapnel. Turning to run, he slipped on his carpet, inadvertently ducking under flying debris that smashed into his wall.
“I heard the impact. With how fast the wind was, it could have been deadly,” he said.
Brian Stiner was just getting out of the shower when he saw his curtains “flying like Superman’s cape.”
“It sounded like three freight trains, or three jetliners coming through here,” said Stiner. “It lasted less than five minutes. You could barely see the trees outside being stripped to twigs.”
Bousraf, his wife and their nineyear-old son have been relocated to a hotel outside town until Wednesday. He has no idea what will happen next. His car is no longer working after cushioning a falling tree. Bousraf said his insurance company hasn’t taken his calls over the long weekend. He’s starting to panic.
“It’s so hard to find a job nowadays,” said Bousraf, who works as a merchandiser at the Walmart in Aurora and as a contract cleaner on the weekend. “My car is how I make a living. It’s my only means to get to work. My hotel, thank God, is close to my work site. I don’t know where they will take us after that. I don’t know what the future will bring. Life changes so fast.”
Amanda Shier, Bousraf’s wife, was on her way home after picking up their son from karate when the storm landed.
“There was hail, plywood flying, porta-potties and trees breaking,” she said.
“Then I got home, and my whole life was gone.”
A surge of volunteers, many from out of town, arrived in recent days to help repair Uxbridge.
Clarence-Rockland, Ont., just east of Ottawa, is also under a state of emergency.
“We’ve had over 200 hydro poles snapped by the storm just in our city alone,” said Mayor Mario Zanth.
“We were out there until two, three, four in the morning trying to make sure we chainsawed all the trees that were blocking roads for access to emergency vehicles.”
Zanth stated that several homes will have to be destroyed due to extreme damage. “Some have damages that can be fixed, but from the ones that I have visited, I can count at least 15 that would have to be torn down.”
The level of destruction in the area underscores how long some of the recovery efforts will take, as hydro providers warn that it could still be days before power is fully restored.
“There’s not a single square inch of our service territory that has not been impacted adversely by this event,” said Hydro Ottawa chief executive Bryce Conrad on a conference call Monday, noting the widespread damage to infrastructure. “Our own distribution system has just been crushed.”
Conrad noted the 187 poles downed not only exceeds the number the city traditionally puts down in a year but also tops the number felled during the 1998 ice storm and 2018 tornado.
“This is as bad as it gets,” he added. Premier Doug Ford also made an appearance Monday in Uxbridge, where he stopped to console residents. He did not take questions from the media, saying now was not the time to discuss politics.
The lack of power prompted the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board to close all schools and childcare centres on Tuesday due to ongoing safety concerns.
“Approximately half of our schools are without power at this time and municipal officials are urging residents to stay off city streets as they attempt to stabilize roadways and traffic lights,” the board said in a notice to parents.
Monday evening Hydro Ottawa tweeted that it had restored power to more than 86,000 customers, but that “the level of damage to our distribution system is simply beyond comprehension.
“We’re managing this from a whole of city perspective, given that no single area of the city is unaffected in some manner.”
In Toronto, power has been restored to most homes.
Toronto Hydro said about 4,000 people remain without power as of midday Monday, but that its repair crews had made “good progress” overnight and were continuing to work “around the clock.”
Hydro One said in a Monday afternoon tweet that it was still working to restore power to 196,000 customers across the province.
In Durham Region, where Uxbridge is located, electricity supplier Elexicon Energy said repair efforts were continuing for 11,500 customers without power.
Gerald Cheng, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, said this weekend’s storm marked the first time deaths had been associated with damaging winds since May 4, 2018, when three people died.
Peterborough police confirmed the 10th fatality in the province in a tweet on Monday afternoon. They said a 61-year-old Lakefield man was killed during the storm by a falling tree.
Across the provincial boundary, Hydro-Québec was reporting about 174,000 customers were still without power, down from a peak of more than 550,000 stretching from Gatineau to Quebec City. Provincial Energy Minister Jonatan Julien held a news conference Monday morning, saying the goal was to re-establish power to 80 per cent of residents before the end of the day.