Perth family recounts tornado ordeal as community cleans up storm damage

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Devin Dubroy and his extended family have rented a cluster of cottages at the Bass Lake Lodge every summer for about a decade. No strangers to tornado warnings, they paid attention when cellphones started to buzz with tornado warnings at 7:37 p.m. Wednesday while they were enjoying birthday cake.

“You know, you get these all the time and nothing happens,” Dubroy said Thursday. “We probably sat there for two or three minutes, and we heard a loud noise that sounded like a train.”

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During a previous vacation, the family had discussed where they would gather in case of a tornado warning. They had decided to shelter in the laundry room at the lakeside resort near Lombardy because it was a concrete structure.

There were 37 people at the gathering, but seven of them were having dinner at a restaurant when the tornado warnings sounded. The other 30 hurried to the laundry room, squeezing themselves and seven dogs into the laundry room measuring just over 200 square feet.

“It was cold in there, so I went to grab some sweaters for the kids. And, on the way back, I heard that loud noise. I had never heard that in a thunderstorm before. So I looked back. And a minute later I saw a wall of water coming across the lake,” Dubroy said.

“The kids were scared, so the ladies were trying to sing songs and make it lighter for them. At one point, it got really bad and everything was blowing sideways and things were flying. We got away from the windows and put a board in front of the door. We were lucky we got everyone in and kept the kids safe,” he said.

“The lesson to learn in all this is to pay attention to warnings,” said Dubroy’s aunt, Margaret Lockyer.

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Residents and visitors were cleaning up debris and fallen trees Thursday after high winds hit the Perth area Wednesday night. According to the Northern Tornadoes Project, which aims to better detect tornado occurrences in Canada, a tornado had touched down near Perth.

The Northern Tornadoes Project, based at Western University, based its findings on “video, radar and early damage reports.” The Perth damage appeared to be heaviest in the Kirk Ferry and Scotch Line area west of Perth.

Another tornado, part of the same weather system, touched down near Brossard, Que., a Montreal suburb, the researchers confirmed.

Environment Canada also confirmed a tornado strike seven kilometres from Perth. Warnings had been issued on Wednesday for Smiths Falls, Perth, eastern Lanark County, Westport, Charleston Lake, Merrickville-Wolford-Kemptville.

Arie Hoogenboom, mayor of the Township of Rideau Lakes, said Thursday he wasn’t aware of any major damage or issues with infrastructure in that region.

A Northern Tornadoes Project team was expected to examine the Perth-area tornado sites.

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Gerald Cheng, a meteorologist with Environment Canada, said the system of “active weather” on Wednesday was triggered by a cold front hitting a humid air mass, blanketing wide swaths of eastern Ontario and southern Quebec.

“It’s one of the tricky parts of thunderstorm forecasting,” Cheng said. “It can be anywhere in the zone. You have to watch individual thunderstorms develop, wait for the popcorn to pop and see if it’s severe.”

But, he added: “Once it’s severe, it’s go time and we issue the weather alert.”

Those who experienced Wednesday’s storm at Bass Lake Lodge said the torrential rain and high winds were there and gone within minutes, maybe even seconds. No one saw a funnel cloud or waterspout.

Bill Peterson, who has a lakefront trailer at the lodge, also received a warning on his cellphone. His wife, Rose, got down on the kitchen floor.

“It was maybe 30 seconds and it was gone,” he said.

When he looked outside, all Bill Peterson could see was downed branches blocking the door. A large basswood tree and some smaller cedars had fallen, trapping the Petersons in the trailer until a neighbour came to their rescue with a battery-operated chainsaw. Bill believed it could have been more serious if the cedars had not blocked the larger tree as it fell.

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“It’s a good community here. We all help each other out,” he said. “Someone was watching over us, that’s for sure. When you think about trailer parks in Texas, there’s nothing left.”

Trevor Strickland was on the porch of a trailer with his two young daughters when he received the tornado alert on his cellphone.

“We said, ‘This isn’t going to be too bad.’ And then we saw the clouds rolling over these trees really fast. It was a bright white cloud. It was huge. And then we heard the noises. We just got into the trailer and there was a downpour,” Strickland said. “The trailer was rocking.”

Just to the north, on the south side of Otty Lake, Judy Cowie and her family watched the storm roll in, then raced for the basement when a large tree fell.

“We had just been joking that afternoon saying we haven’t had a good storm in a while, because we often get storms on the lake,” she said Thursday as crews cleared fallen trees, “never thinking that this was going to happen to us.”

Public Safety Canada advises those who receive tornado warnings to go to the basement or take shelter in small interior ground-floor rooms such as bathrooms, closets or hallways. If there is no basement, shelter under heavy tables or desks and avoid windows, outside walls and doors.

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More than half of all deaths from tornadoes happen in mobile homes, says Public Safety Canada, which warns people to avoid cars and mobile homes in case of a tornado warning and instead to find shelter elsewhere, preferably in a building with a strong foundation. If no shelter is available, lie down in a ditch away from the car or mobile home.

With files from Marlo Glass

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