Tornadoes, windstorms and torrential rains all added up to an extremely difficult year in Manitoba. It seemed as though almost no area of southern Manitoba escaped the wrath of the wicked weather.
People were forced from their homes by some of the extremes. Many farmers finished the year without a crop because of excess moisture. Floods damaged thousands of roads, bridges and culverts across the southern part
of the province.
Because of the difficulties, 2005 will endure in people’s minds for a long time to come.
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Tornadoes devastate farm families
One of the most harrowing weather events in Manitoba this year was a tornado near Pilot Mound that travelled at least seven kilometres, demolishing everything in its path.
Andrew and Stephanie Klassen were at their farm home on the evening of Saturday, July 2, when the twister struck. Their son was with them, as well as three guests.
They became aware of the danger only minutes before the tornado whipped through their farmyard.
“By that time everything was just black and it was already on the ground,” said Stephanie. “It was really wide so we knew there wasn’t much chance of getting away.”
Their only hope for survival was to hide in the basement. They waited there in fear, wondering whether the house could withstand the force that was about to strike.
“We heard the noise first and a whole bunch of stuff going on and then it was very quiet,” Klassen said. “The second time the noise came, then we were really scared because we thought the house was going.
“You could hear the crashes and the bangs out there and you thought, ‘Oh, the next thing is the roof is going to go,’ but it held.”
The tornado damaged or destroyed almost everything in their yard, including a lot of machinery. The thought of repairing the damage was daunting. And it was disheartening when the Klassens noticed they had lost the trees surrounding the farmyard.
“I don’t think there are words to describe that feeling,” Klassen said. “We were OK and things are replaceable, but it’s hard to see 30 years of your work gone.
“All that was pretty much left was our house, and it was really battered. I’m thankful that we’re OK but very sad to see that it happened.”
At least five yard sites were hit by the tornado.
Robin and Kelli-Ann McKay were away on a camping trip when it swept through their farmyard, destroying everything, including their house trailer.
Kelli-Ann still finds it hard to talk about what they saw upon returning home that day.
“There was nothing standing,” she said, struggling to keep her composure. “Our house, our barns, our bins, our trees … gone.”
They had not rebuilt as of early December. When interviewed Dec. 6, McKay said they were still cleaning up wreckage left by the storm.
Photos taken in the area after the tornado show trees snapped off, buildings that looked as though they had been crushed by a gigantic mallet, and homes and vehicles punctured by shards of wood.
There were 13 confirmed tornados in Manitoba by the end of August, according to Dale Marciski of Environment Canada. The average per year for the province is nine.
Water damage was not the only thing farmers and rural residents of Manitoba had to contend with this year.
John Braun, mayor of Gretna, was awakened on the morning of June 19 by what he described as a loud roaring sound. The roar, he soon discovered, was caused by winds gusting through his community at more than 140 km-h.
“You knew something was happening that didn’t happen every day,” he said following the storm.
The weather system swept through an area south of Winkler and continued eastward to Letellier. High winds toppled trees onto homes and power lines,
resulting in power outages.
The power outage at Gretna lasted about 12 hours. It took two weeks to clean up most of the fallen trees and debris scattered throughout the town.
Lisa Sommers, a resident of one of the affected towns, pulled her daughter from a bedroom just moments before a tree branch crashed through the ceiling.
“If I hadn’t gotten her out, she would have died in there,” Sommers told a news reporter immediately after the storm. “I feel sick, I feel sick. This is going to take weeks.”
At Letellier, 13 empty grain cars were blown off the railroad tracks near a high throughput terminal. It was an illustration of the wind’s staggering force.
Dale Marciski of Environment Canada said a downburst was the most likely source. A downburst is a rush of air that sweeps down from a thunderstorm.
“It comes down very quickly and when it hits the ground it spreads out,” Marciski said. “It can cover a fairly wide area. That’s why it can be so destructive.”
Excess moisture damages homes, municipalities
Vern and Leona Williams didn’t realize their home was in jeopardy when water began lapping against the outside of their basement on Thursday, June 30, at Deloraine, a community in southwestern Manitoba.
A dike on the west side of town had been breached by runoff caused by heavy rains in the area. That let water flood into the southern end of town where the Williams live.
They only learned the seriousness of their situation when one of their basement walls collapsed, allowing the water to gush in.
“It came right up to the top of the steps,” said Vern. “We were lucky nobody was down there. My wife had been down there five to 10 minutes before it happened, trying to put stuff up a little farther.”
The Williams stayed in their home that night and then went to live with neighbours for a couple of days before renting a house to live in. It took months to get a new basement built under their house. They were not able to return home until Oct. 1.
The Williams lost furniture, appliances and many other items that were stored in their original basement. Also lost were photos that can never be replaced.
Town workers, farmers and other volunteers pitched in to set up pumps and hoses to get the water pumped out of town. Within days, the community had the appearance of returning to normal, but the flood left its mark.
“It went right from just a damp basement through to basements that were full (of water),” said Deloraine chief administrative officer Rick Branston. “We had a couple of homes with walls that literally collapsed.”
There were many communities in southern Manitoba this year where homeowners contended with water seeping into basements due to saturated soils or because of overland flooding. Sewer backups were another problem caused by extreme amounts of moisture.
In rural municipalities, damage to roads, culverts and bridges was widespread. Part of the damage was caused by a rapid thaw in the spring, compounded by unusually high amounts of rainfall.
The RM of Daly northwest of Brandon was among the rural municipalities worst affected. Reeve Evan Smith described the damage as severe.
“At one time, we had (60 kilometres) of roads closed because of washouts.”
Damage claims pour in It was one of the worst years on record for the Manitoba Emergency Measures Organization, which received more than 4,500 private claims from people seeking disaster financial assistance.
On top of that were the claims from local authorities, such as municipalities, for damaged roads, culverts and bridges. Provincial roads needed repair due to the extreme moisture.
EMO deputy director Paul Anderson estimated in early December that $54 million would be paid out in disaster financial assistance this year.
“On top of that, there will be money paid through private insurance companies.”
The damage extended across southern Manitoba and reached into a number of northerly areas. Many of the private claims to EMO were from people with basements damaged by water.
The majority of those claims were minor. However, some were major, including homes that were damaged beyond repair or needed significant repairs to their foundations.
“It’s our largest event in terms of geographic area, second largest in terms of the dollars we expect to pay out, and third largest in terms of the number of claims we received,” Anderson said.
“These claims are scattered so far and wide, it definitely is taxing us in terms of getting out there.”
Thousands of roads, culverts and bridges were damaged by heavy spring runoff and the glut of rain that fell on southern Manitoba this year, said Anderson. In one instance, a culvert was washed more than a kilometre and wound up in a farmer’s field.
Crop losses high
Excess moisture plagued a lot of farmers this year in Manitoba. Crop insurance payments for 2005 had already surpassed $200 million as of early December and were expected to approach $300 million by the time all claims were settled.
Herb Sulkers, vice-president of insurance operations for the Manitoba Agricultural Services Corp., believes this year’s claims will set a new record for Manitoba.
Excess moisture this spring prevented farmers from seeding 1.5 million acres of cropland. The eastern half of the province had the greatest difficulties with trying to plant into soggy soils.
Heavy thunderstorms compounded the challenges for farmers by drowning a lot of crop across the southern part of the province.
Provincially, more than 800,000 acres of seeded cropland were plowed under because crops could not contend with the moisture.
“That’s a crop insurance figure, where fields were so bad they were plowed down,” said Manitoba Agriculture agronomist John Hollinger. “That’s not counting fields where some of it may have been worked down and the rest left, but still didn’t produce normally.”
A shift to dry weather in August added to the damages. Crops that had shallow roots because of excess moisture suddenly found themselves unable to tap water from the soil.
“It was really dry in August and the roots of the plants weren’t down very far, so they kind of suffered from that,” Sulkers said.
Windstorm lashes communities
One of the most harrowing weather events in Manitoba this year was a tornado near Pilot Mound that travelled at least seven kilometres, demolishing everything in its path.
Andrew and Stephanie Klassen were at their farm home on the evening of Saturday, July 2, when the twister struck. Their son was with them, as well as three guests.
They became aware of the danger only minutes before the tornado whipped through their farmyard.
“By that time everything was just black and it was already on the ground,” said Stephanie. “It was really wide so we knew there wasn’t much chance of getting away.”
Their only hope for survival was to hide in the basement. They waited there in fear, wondering whether the house could withstand the force that was about to strike.
“We heard the noise first and a whole bunch of stuff going on and then it was very quiet,” Klassen said. “The second time the noise came, then we were really scared because we thought the house was going.
“You could hear the crashes and the bangs out there and you thought, ‘Oh, the next thing is the roof is going to go,’ but it held.”
The tornado damaged or destroyed almost everything in their yard, including a lot of machinery. The thought of repairing the damage was daunting. And it was disheartening when the Klassens noticed they had lost the trees surrounding the farmyard.
“I don’t think there are words to describe that feeling,” Klassen said. “We were OK and things are replaceable, but it’s hard to see 30 years of your work gone.
“All that was pretty much left was our house, and it was really battered. I’m thankful that we’re OK but very sad to see that it happened.”
At least five yard sites were hit by the tornado.
Robin and Kelli-Ann McKay were away on a camping trip when it swept through their farmyard, destroying everything, including their house trailer.
Kelli-Ann still finds it hard to talk about what they saw upon returning home that day.
“There was nothing standing,” she said, struggling to keep her composure. “Our house, our barns, our bins, our trees … gone.”
They had not rebuilt as of early December. When interviewed Dec. 6, McKay said they were still cleaning up wreckage left by the storm.
Photos taken in the area after the tornado show trees snapped off, buildings that looked as though they had been crushed by a gigantic mallet, and homes and vehicles punctured by shards of wood.
There were 13 confirmed tornados in Manitoba by the end of August, according to Dale Marciski of Environment Canada. The average per year for the province is nine.
Water damage was not the only thing farmers and rural residents of Manitoba had to contend with this year.
John Braun, mayor of Gretna, was awakened on the morning of June 19 by what he described as a loud roaring sound. The roar, he soon discovered, was caused by winds gusting through his community at more than 140 km-h.
“You knew something was happening that didn’t happen every day,” he said following the storm.
The weather system swept through an area south of Winkler and continued eastward to Letellier. High winds toppled trees onto homes and power lines,
resulting in power outages.
The power outage at Gretna lasted about 12 hours. It took two weeks to clean up most of the fallen trees and debris scattered throughout the town.
Lisa Sommers, a resident of one of the affected towns, pulled her daughter from a bedroom just moments before a tree branch crashed through the ceiling.
“If I hadn’t gotten her out, she would have died in there,” Sommers told a news reporter immediately after the storm. “I feel sick, I feel sick. This is going to take weeks.”
At Letellier, 13 empty grain cars were blown off the railroad tracks near a high throughput terminal. It was an illustration of the wind’s staggering force.
Dale Marciski of Environment Canada said a downburst was the most likely source. A downburst is a rush of air that sweeps down from a thunderstorm.
“It comes down very quickly and when it hits the ground it spreads out,” Marciski said. “It can cover a fairly wide area. That’s why it can be so destructive.”
