One Dead, 6 injured in Ontario Twisters
August 21st, 2009 at 1:50 am by Bill Steffen under Bill's Blog, News, Weather
<–Lightning hits the CN-Tower in Toronto. Severe thunderstorms that formed in extreme eastern Michigan early Thursday afternoon raced east into Ontario, Canada. The storms produced tornadoes, hail and strong straight-line winds (nice pictures at the link). At least six people (inc. 3 other children) were injured and an 11-year old boy was killed in the town of Durham which is just east of Lake Huron. The tornado struck around 4 PM and destroyed buildings and knocked roofs off others. The tornado continued east into the town of Markdale. A state of emergency has been declared in Durham, and also in the town of Vaughan near Toronto, where a 2nd twister caused injuries and heavily damaged or destroyed at least 120 homes and buildings. One eyewitness said a car was pulled 30-feet into the air by the deadly twister. An emergency shelter has been set up for those displaced by the storm. There was heavy damage in the towns of Blue Mountain (20 homes destroyed) and Milton, where the roof was torn off a former church. Good Video of the twister w/debris here. More pictures here.
So the Canadians get the fun weather and we miss out again.
Fail! Fail! Fail!
Fun weather? 1 killed and 6 injured doesn’t sound fun to me.
I agree with Ben! What is fun about weather that kills people?
Anything can kill a person…for instance..driving is tons of fun, but every once and a while, there’s a crash and someone dies. Does that make driving for everyone NOT fun anymore? No. Same with the wx…severe wx is awesome! But every once and a while, a severe storm turns deadly. However, that in itself is what makes severe wx so interesting (and coincidentally, “fun” for some of us). We should be humbled by the power of nature and the force behind it, God. Some things are beyond our control, and the wx is one of them.
It’s sad. I don’t think that area gets a lot of severe storms/tornadoes? We drive through Ontario on our way to New York about twice a year. How scary. Our thoughts and prayers ware with the victims and thier families. I suppose that Twist5 is correct that Mother Nature wreaks havoc where she will and innocent people get caught in the way. Did they have much warning, I wonder?
My teen girls were visiting friends in Durham when the storm hit, pretty much out of the blue. I hear that the people there are responding to the crisis with outstanding generosity–even the insurance companies are bending over backward to help the victims. Such an unusual weather event for that region, too. It’s remarkable that there wasn’t more damage, given the time of day.