Cleanup continued Monday after a powerful wind storm battered the Kingston, Ont. region on Saturday evening.
Winds topping 100 km/h knocked out power to thousands of people, brought down trees and branches, damaged street lights and sent loose objects flying.
Cleanup crews were busy on Monday at 95 Mack Street where the storm brought a tree crashing onto the roof and front porch of the home.
Fallen branches also damaged Go Green Baby, an eco-friendly store for moms and their babies of Division Street.
“The damage seemed to be mostly just to the roof,” says store owner Amanda Findley. “We had minimal damage inside the store, just to some of the drywall and all of our internet and phone cables were totally cut off, but otherwise we got really lucky.”
Jiachen Peng and his roommates live across the street from the store and watched first responders and Utilities Kingston deal with the initial cleanup.
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“The wind on that night was some of the strongest I’ve ever felt in my entire life,” says Peng.
“I legitimately felt like I was being lifted off of my feet and it was crazy how strong the winds were. And you walk down the street at night and all the trees were shaking and the lampposts were shaking and the tarps were going crazy. It was wild.”
According to Utilities Kingston, at one time or another Saturday night, a total of 13,000 customers lost power.
“The largest single outage during the event was around 5,200 customers,” says Utilities Kingston Chief Operations Manager Jim Miller. “Most of these were caused by tree limbs, branches, trees being uprooted and pulled down and hitting the lines and basically losing power as a result.”
Fences along Centennial Drive fell victim to the wind, and shingle repair is now a common sight in neighbourhoods across the city.
Winds that gusted between 90 and 120 km/h even lifted a trampoline out of a yard and into a pole.
Utilities Kingston says that as of Monday, power has been restored to all but three customers, one of which is 95 Mack Street.
As for Go Green Baby, they hope to have their internet and phone lines back up and running by the end of the week.
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