Everyone from arborists to renovation companies will be busy after winds peaking at 93 kilometres an hour battered Calgary Tuesday.
Paul Saindon owns Your Tree Doctor and spent Wednesday inspecting a large fir tree that fell over in a yard.
He’s been taking calls around the clock.
“Certainly it has been brutal. Just on my way to this job site, I got three more calls for situations like that.”
Downed trees and broken branches fell in all parts of the city.
The fire department responded to over 200 emergency calls during the event. At one point there were 30 to 40 calls at a time, like the brick wall that collapsed inside Sambo Automechanical.
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“He was working on the car and then they could feel the wall kind of shaking, so they kind of backed up and then it eventually collapsed,” said an employee who declined to provide his name.
There were power outages caused by trees or snapped hydro lines all over the city.
Enmax said 12,000 homes and businesses were in the dark at the peak of the wind event. Crews worked until 4 a.m. repairing lines and restoring power.
The City of Calgary said the were only a few reports of debris falling from office buildings and construction sites.
Wayne Brown, the coordinator of the safety response unit, said the wind warning system alerted building owners 12 to 15 hours in advance.
“We’re seeing fewer and fewer incidents from the tall buildings, the big construction sites. So they’re doing a much better job. So I’m thinking it’s probably related to the wind warning system.”
It will take a while for life to return to normal and that will also leave people time to prepare for the next emergency, according to Enmax.
The Calgary utility company said the storm is a reminder of how important it is to be ready for the unexpected.
For information from Enmax on what to do when power goes out, click here
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