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Windstorm Experience by Robert J Gordon
Saturday, May 7, 2016
Rated "G" by the Author.
A personal story describing the experience of Bob and Shirley Gordon during the historic 2002 Northern Ontario Halfway Lake Tornado.
THE HALFWAY LAKE STORM
When fifty to eighty foot tall trees twist and crash to the ground during a severe thunder and lightning storm meteorologists tend to describe the action as a microburst. People surviving the windstorm often like to refer to it as a mini-tornado. Either description becomes inconsequential when dozens of travel-trailers occupying space in a provincial park are damaged or destroyed by the wind.
During the morning of July 28 2002, campers at Halfway Lake Provincial Park in Northern Ontario were expecting another hot, humid day with the prospect of a thunderstorm after several days of plus 30 degree Celsius days. Thundershowers after a spell of hot weather are common in the region, but in recent years, the severity of storms has been much more pronounced. In the past a microburst or tornado was extremely uncommon in the area. Today the weather phenomenon is reported on a more or less regular basis throughout the summer months.
As the Halfway Lake storm drew near lightning became intense with thunder more pronounced than usual during a storm. Each flash of lightning was accompanied by a crash of thunder the moment the lightning flashed. The severity of the lightning-thunder indicated the storm was centered directly over the campground. Like many thunderstorms, the winds became stronger while rain cascaded relentlessly through the mixture of tall evergreens, fifty to one hundred-year-old birches, and towering spruce in the largely unspoiled wilderness park.
My wife and I watched a wall of rainwater approach before remembering that the bedroom window in the trailer was not completely closed. Stepping inside while my wife watched the storm from the vinyl add-a-room attached to the trailer, I squeezed into the narrow space beside the bed and raised the mini-blind to close the window. Looking outside the wind, sounding like the engine of a jet airplane taking off, pushed sixty-foot tall trees with so much force the giant trees appeared to touch the ground. Seconds later whipping upright, their needles twisting in the wind, roots lifted out of the ground. The trees began to tumble to the ground like a child’s game of pick-up sticks. The entire sequence taking only a few seconds.
By the time I got to the door leading to the add-a-room attached to the trailer, the wind billowing through the vinyl room had knocked over a lamp hitting my wife on the shoulder. She bolted into the trailer and I took her in my arms falling to the floor beside the refrigerator while trying to cover her body with my own in the event a tree came crashing through the roof.
The trailer lifted a moment later before crashing down on its stabilizer jacks. A half dozen tall evergreens came crashing down on the roof forcing the twenty nine foot trailer with its extended slide-out back onto the ground.
Although the microburst/tornado only lasted one or two minutes, once it passed there was an awesome silence. All we could hear above the silence was the distant rumble of thunder and the sound of rainwater surging off the roof through the crumpled remains of the vinyl add-a-room and broken tree branches.
Fighting to climb over the broken branches blocking our way in every direction, we were completely disoriented. Where a moment before tall pines, spruce, birch, and poplar trees surrounded the trailers, the entire horizon had changed. In the distance we saw hills covered with a tangle of fallen trees, tree stumps snapped off twenty feet in the air like broken toothpicks and fallen branches piled up to eight feet high.
Trees came down on top of our trailer, GMC Sierra 4-wheel drive truck, boat, motor, and trailer. The boat motor/trailer pointed towards the sky, tilted from the weight of one of the fallen trees on the stern with the motor driven into the soft earth. The truck had taken a direct hit from a large pine tree crushing the cap and box down to the frame. The tree was so heavy it forced the air in the tires to the top making it appear as if they were flat. A garden swing, barbecue, and picnic tables across the yard were all crushed under more fallen trees.
Our initial concern after emerging from debris was for the safety of other campers and the children that had been running and biking along the park roads before the storm reached its most fierce intensity. The sound of chainsaws springing into action was the first sign that others had survived the storm. Soon other campers began climbing over the maze of trees and tangled branches to discover if other campers survived the onslaught.
A friend and neighbor in the park was the first person to arrive at our trailer to find out if we had been injured. He had been in his trailer with his and two grandchildren who had come to visit after leaving the parent’s tent trailer across the road before the storm struck. They survived unscathed after several trees crashed into their unit. Falling trees crushed the parent's trailer. Fortunately neither parent was injured, only badly shaken like all of the survivors.
Trying to cut my way out with my chainsaw salvaged from its storage place under the trailer was futile. After sawing through a couple of large tree trunks, I reached the road in front of our trailer site. It didn’t make much difference since there were still hundreds of fallen trees piled high in every direction making the road impassible. The only way out was to climb over the fallen trees and struggle through that maze of branches. A dangerous activity since trees were still creaking and cracking as they settled further into the tangle of branches.
Another nearby camper came climbing over the piles of fallen trees making his way to the comfort station a short distance down the road. His wife had been at the station when the storm struck and he was trying to make certain she was not injured. Realizing we were not going to be able to get to safety very soon, and even if we did didn’t have any transportation, I offered the man my chainsaw, gas and oil to cut his way through to the comfort station.
As soon as Park Superintendent realized a major windstorm storm had struck, he directed the mostly student unprepared staff, to do what they could to help people in the park until emergency personnel arrived. The storm had cut a swath between three and four kilometers long and two hundred meters wide through the most densely populated portion of the park.
Assessing the seriousness of the situation as a major emergency, the superintendent called for rapid response from emergency workers. The first emergency vehicle siren heard by stranded, dazed campers was a fire truck arriving from Cartier the nearest community to the park. Fortunately many of the firefighter volunteers from Cartier are either independent forest industry contractors or employees of the pulp and paper giant operating several sawmills a pulp, and paper processing plant nearby. As the storm struck just prior to eleven o’clock on Sunday morning, most volunteers were off work and home when the call came in about the storm damage at Halfway Lake Provincial Park.
The men responding knew the severity that could result from a windstorm dropping out of the sky in heavily forested areas and how to deal with the situation. Their industrial grade chainsaws sounded like a series of portable sawmills leaping into action as the experienced loggers began cutting their way through the tangled rubble of trees rescuing victims of the storm. With over one hundred campsites affected, the volunteers spent the rest of that day, coming back the next day to clear trees from roads and entrances to campsites. More Firefighters soon arrived as help poured in from several nearby communities to assist with rescue and salvage operations.
After the firefighters from Cartier and other communities began work, emergency vehicles started arriving. Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources Fire Management crews, fires trucks, and rescue vehicles from two nearby towns arrived with at least a half dozen Ontario Provincial Police cars responding to the emergency. Before long a fleet of emergency medical vehicles from stations in the Greater City of Sudbury reached the scene as a Medivac emergency helicopter flew in to airlift one seriously injured camper to hospital.
Injuries from the storm were mercifully few with a broken leg, a few cracked ribs and some scrapes, cuts and bruises. Most observers felt it was a miracle that someone among the hundreds of campers in the park nobody was killed or seriously injured.
Harrowing stories of near misses abounded after people gathered in the undamaged portion of the park near the supply store. A student supervisor and her supply store staff kept the store open. Located on the storm perimeter the store was not damaged. Campers began arriving at the store seeking assistance and support. Most arrived after fighting their way under, over, and through the tangle of branches and tree stumps.
One camper reported going outside when the rain began to pelt down in an effort to lower the canopy on his trailer after rain came down faster than the angled canvas could let it pour off. When the storm struck, his trailer lifted partially off the ground tilting over while his wife was cooking bacon over the propane stove inside. Acting quickly, she poured the hot bacon fat down the trailer sink drain, probably averting a fire. Blocked from getting back inside the trailer by a fallen tree, her husband made his way to the rear where he was able to smash through an open window to gain entry where his wife and three-year-old daughter were trapped. All three later squeezed out of the trailer through the partially blocked entrance after tearing away torn canopy plastic.
One of the reported injuries resulted from a man trying to clear a large tree from the top of his tent trailer partially crushed by a tree. Slipping during an effort to get his wife out of the trailer, he fell into the maze of branches cracking several ribs. It took emergency crews almost an hour to get to his trailer site after the accident was reported.
Another camper was making his second trip in pouring rain to the dumping station with a tote tank of effluent from the trailer sewer system when trees started to fall. His wife and two young children were sitting out the rain playing card games inside their trailer across the park from the sewage-dumping station. Realizing what was happening he abandoned his SUV, since the road was now blocked by fallen trees, and began to run and climb over the fallen trees and branches in the direction of his trailer. After twice becoming disoriented by the changed landscape he finally climbed on top of a heap of branches and realized he was standing on metal. Looking down he saw it was the hood of a neighbour’s truck. Minutes later he arrived at his campsite to find several trees had fallen across his own trailer. His family was not injured, but his wife had kept the children inside in the event broken electric lines strung throughout the park had electrified the metal steps of the trailer. It had taken an hour for the man to travel less than half a mile from the dumping station to his trailer.
In another reported incident a man on a camping weekend with his two sons decided to take the boys to the park store for some added supplies as the storm began rolling in. When they returned to their trailer after the storm, a tree almost two feet in diameter had cut the trailer in two. Rescuers determined that it would have meant someone would have received serious injuries or even been killed if the family had been in the trailer.
Most of the concern felt by campers affected by the sudden storm was for their friends and neighbours. It was especially worrisome that some of the campers were in tent trailers when the storm struck. In the case of one couple, their trailer site was designed like a summer kitchen with tarps, picnic tables and make shift cupboards set up to stay for the entire summer. Although their tent trailer and their Lincoln car miraculously missed being demolished, or even badly damaged by falling trees, they were trapped in the campsite by fallen branches. Moments after the storm abated close-by neighbours worried about the couple’s well being cut their way to the campsite with chainsaws.
Reports of incidents came in all day. One was about a group of hikers that were thought to have been on a hiking trail that was annihilated by the storm. It was later discovered the group had registered for the fifteen-kilometer hike but had not left before the storms struck and were never in danger. A woman coming out of one of the undamaged comfort stations reported seeing a funnel cloud twisting through the trees ripping them out of the ground. Still others said a waterspout could be seen as the epicenter of the storm crossed Raven Lake, a small pond in the center of the park. A man was reported to have brought two pre-teen boys to a safety under his truck as trees began to fall. Another man sat in his truck parked outside of his tent trailer after a tree blocked his way into the trailer where his wife was alone. The woman escaped injury although a tree fell across the trailer. While her husband sat in his truck to get out of the rain and wind a tree fell across the truck box and another across the hood both narrowly missing the cab. Those were only a few of the dozens of close miss stories that people recounted after rescuers freed them from the tangle of fallen trees.
The sight of community firefighters and volunteers cutting through the tangle of trees clearing roads was the first calming effect most campers felt. The emergency medical services got to the park quickly, but before they arrived, medically trained people from among the campers climbed over the mounds of broken branches and felled trees. They treated minor injuries in some cases, but mainly worked with campers in various stages of shock. Nurses, St John’s Ambulance training graduates, and people with training from the workplace fanned out to help those in need.
A month after the storm more than one hundred microburst/tornado survivors met and celebrated their good fortune with a corn roast and potluck supper at nearby Provincial Park. Park staff and most of the seasonal campers from Halfway Lake exchanged stories about the day the wind swooped down and changed everyone’s life. Almost everyone vowed to return to the park the following season to continue camping, albeit in a slightly different style.
325 letters my father wrote to my mother during his time in World War II.
Woven together in a timeline of events of three of his brothers, 5 brothers-in-law, and one cousin, all 10 of them were in WWII at the same time.
325 letters my father wrote to my mother during his time in World War II.
Woven together in a timeline of events of three of his brothers, 5 brothers-in-law, and one cousin, all 10 of them were in WWII at the same time.
