Watch the video above: cleaning up after destructive winds swept across Saskatoon on Wednesday
SASKATOON – Residents are cleaning up and assessing the damage after destructive winds tore through Saskatoon on Wednesday.
The city was battered as gusts reached 115 kilometers an hour.
One of the more remarkable sights was a SaskTel cell tower, mother nature’s sheer power bent the steel mast in half.
SaskTel says towers are built to withstand more extreme conditions than experienced in Saskatoon but this particular one was a mobile tower leaving it more vulnerable to the conditions.
“Generally that structure would need a significant amount of pressure on it to come down like the way it did,” said SaskTel’s Tara Tibeau.
“This particular tower was 40 per cent higher than any of our existing mobile towers, unfortunately the higher it gets the more it’s subject to those types of extreme conditions,” she added.
Crews spent Thursday cleaning up the mess and installing a replacement.
READ MORE: Wind storm batters Saskatchewan, leaving a wake of damage
Trican Tire’s Randy Kachur is still trying to fathom how a glass building ended up in their tire yard and on their roof.
After assessing the damage, he says it is worse than first expected.
“We found out later today there was a chunk of the building that came across our roof and severed our gas lines so we have no heat in the building,” he said.
The damage to a truck in the path of a roof blown off a home under construction in Stonebridge now more clear, the roof is completely caved in.
A pile of broken wood beams has been left in the middle of the construction area that once formed the structure of a roof.
Boards replace windows in a downtown tower after the strong winds sent glass crashing to the street.
At their strongest wind gusts reached 115 kilometres an hour, uncanny for this time of year and on top of that it was the warmest Jan. 15 on record, reaching 7.5 degrees.
It wasn’t all bad as the warmer weather improved road conditions.
“It was actually a positive effect because with the sand and salt that’s already on the road with the warmer temperatures and the wind it created a vast melting effect across the roadways which actually improved the roads that had icy sections already,” said City of Saskatoon Director of Public Works Pat Hyde.
As residents continue to assess the damage SGI says it is bracing for a number of insurance claims.
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