Watch the video above: Toronto parks also devastated by ice storm. Mark McAllister reports.
TORONTO – Downed trees and broken branches at city parks will have to wait. Crews, busy with clearing sidewalks and private property, have yet to start the clean up in parks.
Deputy mayor Norm Kelly toured Thompson Memorial Park in Scarborough on Thursday along with councillor for the area, Glenn De Baeremaeker, and the city parks director Richard Ubbens.
“One of the basic initiatives of the city of Toronto has been to grow its tree canopy,” deputy mayor Kelly said. “So here we are as a council investing in growing our tree canopy and whack, we get this enormous setback as a result of the damage from the ice storm.”
Kelly said he spent time as a university student planting trees in what was then the borough of Scarborough and says “it’s a shame to see them reach their majestic maturity only to see them damaged by the ice storm that hit us.”
The approximately 600 city employees who’ve been tasked with working 12-hour days in order to clean up the mess are still working on hazards across the city, mainly damaged trees hanging over power lines, sidewalks or driveways.
“We don’t have crews in the park yet,” Ubbens said.
WATCH: City Parks Director Richard Ubbens addresses the status of the ice storm cleanup within parks
But when crews do begin to work on the parks, the grounds themselves present their own challenges. Ubbens is hoping crews can get into the parks while the ground is still frozen to prevent damage to turf and pathways.
There is a thaw on the way as temperatures could reach 10 degrees Celsius on Saturday.
Councillor De Bearemaeker says the storm that knocked out power to 300,000 Toronto Hydro customers and hundreds of thousands of others across the province on Dec. 21 has “decimated” the Scarborough park.
“Wherever you go around this park, everything is like this. If you go by the football fields, by the public washrooms, I don’t think you can move 50 feet in this park without seeing damage,” he said. “So what I think you are seeing here is 100 years of growth being wiped out in one storm.”
WATCH: The ice storm left thousands without power – meaning thousands of interesting stories to tell. Global’s Alan Carter hit the streets of Toronto to hear your tales of power outage woe.
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