WATCH: Mark Carcasole digs into why some residents are still displaced six months after a tornado ripped through the town.
TORONTO – Some Angus, Ontario residents are still waiting to get back inside their house six months after an EF2 tornado ripped through the town.
The twister caught town residents off-guard, sending them scrambling for their basements. Some narrowly escaped the devastation left behind as the tornado tore a strip through a residential neighbourhood on Stonemount Crescent, damaging over 100 homes.
Shingles flew while entire roofs and walls were sheared off of homes. Vehicles were flipped, windows were shattered, and in one case the entire second storey of a home was torn away.
The six months since then may seem to have gone by quickly for those not affected, but for some it’s felt like ages.
Stonemount Crescent, one of the hardest hit streets, was still lined with contractor’s trucks on Tuesday. A handful of driveways still have garbage dumpsters parked in them where workers are removing old fixtures and debris in the repair process.
Ann-Marie McKay and her family managed to rent an undamaged home on the same street for the time being; keeping a close eye on the rebuilding process about 30 doors down.
“All the electrical is being done, all the plumbing is being done,” McKay said. “So now it’s just…the insulation (and) drywall.”
WATCH: Drone captures tornado damage in Angus
She’s optimistic the family won’t have to wait much longer to get back into their home. They had previously been told they would be home for the holidays and had already booked movers to help them. Since then, McKay says they’ve been given a revised date of January 15th.
“Our contractor was telling us that the reason why the delay was that permits from the township weren’t issued until September,” she said.
A few doors down, Terry Manning was given the same explanation by contractors.
“The most frustrating part was the three months of the summer that absolutely nothing got done because permits hadn’t been issued.”
Manning spent the first seven weeks after the tornado living in a hotel room. His insurance company is now renting him a place in Barrie for the time being. He has been told to expect a late-January homecoming. There were added delays to his repairs because once contractors got started, they found cracks in the firewall between Manning’s house, and his neighbour’s.
“I think most of us have realized that patience is gonna be demanded of us,” Manning said after inspecting the bare interior of his home. But he’s not willing to forgive the initial delays.
Newly re-elected Essa Township Mayor Terry Dowdall said the anger at town officials is misplaced.
“We hired extra people, we kept people on,” he said.
In the days following the tornado, Mayor Dowdall vowed in multiple interviews and news conferences to fast track the building permits necessary to rebuild damaged and destroyed homes. He still insists Essa Township officials followed through on that promise, claiming some fault lies with some of the very contractors that are telling residents to blame the municipality.
“Sometimes it’s (that) they haven’t done their due diligence to come in and get the permit, I think…But we’ve done our part and will continue to.”
A spokesperson for Winmar Barrie, the company working on McKay’s home, says they called in crews from their Toronto and London branches to help out in the Angus effort, given that it happened during an already-busy time of year for construction. However, the spokesperson claimed they were unqualified to comment on how quickly permits were retrieved and acted upon.
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