High winds knocked out the power in northwest Calgary on Thursday afternoon and damaged vehicles after a tent was pulled from its moorings.
“We had a little dustup: we had a wind go through,” Tim Beach, Charlesglen Toyota general manager, told Global News. “It appears to be a plow wind that happened, from all indications. And unfortunately, it lifted up one of our long tents and kind of threw it around like a trampoline.”
Those tents, originally designed to protect cars from hail, have been in place since 2016.
The 50-metre long tents caused damage to surrounding infrastructure once they were airborne.
“The beautiful thing about this is nobody got hurt and we have little to no inventory. There are only four vehicles that appear to be damaged. None of them which are (Charlesglen Toyota’s). Unfortunately, they’re our staff’s.”
Enmax notified customers of a power outage affecting the Citadel, Royal Vista and Sherwood neighbourhoods mid-afternoon. Just more than an hour later, the utility said the outage had been resolved for more than 1,100 customers.
Beach sent his staff home because of the power outage on Thursday afternoon.
The plans for the car dealership’s show and shine on Saturday to benefit the Cochrane Humane Society went unruffled by Thursday’s wind gusts.
“We want everybody to rest assured that that’s still on. We’re excited to have everybody here,” Beach said.
Global News meteorologist Danielle Savoni said the city’s north had the most reports of wind gusts during the day, which are likely to continue through the evening and into Friday.