EDMONTON – A severe thunderstorm tore through Edmonton Tuesday evening, tearing down trees, downing power lines and even injuries 19 campers.
Tornado warnings and watches were issued for parts of Leduc County and the County of Wetaskiwin Tuesday evening.
Radar indicated a severe thunderstorm was moving along the west shore of Pigeon Lake at 50 kilometres per hour. The storm had a “significant rotation” and was thought to have potential of turning into a tornado, as well as producing large hail, strong wind gusts and heavy rainfall.
Emergency crews were called to the Our Lady Queen of Peace Ranch in northeast Edmonton after a severe thunderstorm tore through a children’s camp and injured 21 people, including 19 children.
On Wednesday morning, the CEO of the children’s camp said one child remained in hospital but was doing well and expected to make a full recovery.
Elsewhere in the city, power lines and trees were knocked down by high winds.
City crews spent the night responding to calls.
“Very busy, very busy,” is how Jordan Brooks, a crew leader, describes Wednesday’s work. “City crews have been out since 1 o’clock in the morning. We started out doing our regular business and we got called in by the city to take care of obvious problems like this that are posing a hazard.”
Brooks’ crew was called in to help with a tree that had been knocked down, taking with it the top of a power pole.
“This tree could have actually killed somebody. If they were in their car when it came down last night, that definitely would have been an ambulance call.”
Brooks says there are about eight crews with his company helping the city respond to calls across Edmonton Wednesday.
“I’m going to be very busy, we’re probably going to be out until about nine or ten o’clock.”
However, Brooks says this kind of storm isn’t uncommon for the region this time of year.
“Late June, early July, we get a lot of storm activity,” he explains. “We actually deal with a lot of this every year.”
Together, crews will remove fallen trees, load up the debris, and clear the area so it doesn’t endanger traffic or pedestrians.
Tim LeRiche, a spokesperson with EPCOR, encourages anyone who notices downed power lines to contact the company.
“It doesn’t matter whether it’s a tree – or wind knocking anything down – downed power lines are dangerous and we don’t want anybody approaching them.”
LeRiche says Tuesday night’s storm caused power outages that impacted thousands of Edmontonians.
“As a result of that storm that passed through, we had some 20,000 people on ten different circuits around the city that were out. And then a whole host of other people that had individual outages at their homes or their properties. This was all caused by falling trees, wind, lightning, all those kind of things.”
“It was a very busy night for EPCOR. We did call in two extra crews, and we had all of those ten main circuits up and operating by 1:22 am.”
However, if you’re still experiencing a power outage, LeRiche says contact EPCOR and notify them of the problem and the location.
“We’re still getting phone calls,” he said Wednesday. “We get trees that get broken and they fall into wires.”
“The public are our eyes and ears,” he says, adding EPCOR will send a crew out as soon as possible.
“Those downed lines could be live and they could cause serious injury.”
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