NEEPAWA, Man. – With sweat beading on his forehead, Bruce Bremner pauses to survey the wreckage around him.
A canola crop that once stood two metres tall now hugs the ground. Splintered tree trunks jut from what was once a shelterbelt, and two wooden sheds lie in a mangled heap.
Bremner’s farm took the full brunt of a tornado that lashed his area southwest of Neepawa on July 24.
He had ducked into his basement just moments before the Herculean winds struck his yard and two-storey home.
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“It just sounded like an Indy 500 car race was going on,” he said the day after the storm. “There was quite a howl to the wind.”
The tornado turned his shelterbelt into matchsticks, ripped two doors off a machine shed and dented a steel grain bin. Everywhere he looks, his fields are flattened.
Helping hands
It wasn’t the wreckage that moved Bremner to tears last week. It was the people who arrived at his farm July 25 to help sort through the mess.
Dozens of volunteers helped clear debris and the gnarled mass of broken spruce and maple trees.
Among them were family, friends and neighbors, but there were also people whom Bremner had never met before.
“It’s just incredible,” he said as tears welled up in his eyes. “I’m just really appreciative of the people who turned out to help.”
His house, built in 1979, showed little damage except for some torn shingles and missing soffits.
Bremner’s wife Sheila and two sons were away from home when the tornado hit.
It was one of six reported across southern Manitoba July 24.
There was also one west of Brunkild, three in the Elm Creek area, and another close to Birtle.
