Decade after Pine Lake tornado disaster, Calgary family still gripped with fear when storms hit

The thunderclap unnerves Anne Aronovich.

Black clouds sweeping across the sky — broken by lightning and echoing with thunder as the storm pelted the city with hailstones Monday afternoon — are reason to pause.

They bring back vivid memories for Aronovich, who can easily recall an evening when a similar storm darkened the sky before the deadly Pine Lake tornado tore a destructive path across the landscape.

A decade later, she is still marked by the event, now uneasy when a storm rolls in. When she goes on holidays, she checks first to see what kind of bad weather phenomena are a possibility.

For five years before that night on July 14, 2000, the Aronovich family — Anne, husband Harvey and children Tate and Taylor — camped by the shores of Pine Lake in their trailer.

Then the tornado swept down the field and across the lake, ripping through the campground, upending trailers and knocking people over like rag dolls. It killed 12, including a two-year-old child, and forever changed the lives of those who survived.

"Mother Nature is just so very powerful. I feel more vulnerable when waves are crashing, or wind or when I hear something devastating around the world. I get it now," she said.

It had been the best day, Aronovich recalled. Drinks in hand, she and Harvey were sitting down, relaxing after a hard week as the kids played.

"He said, ‘Anne, it doesn’t get any better than this,’ " she said.

In the same campground, Jeff Cove was mixing drinks while his wife, Monica, was inside the trailer putting together supper when the clouds began to roll in.

They were a funny green, Cove recalled. But at the time, it just appeared to be a bad summer storm about to dump rain on those holidaying at the Green Acres trailer park.

The wind began to pick up and then rain started to pour down. Large hailstones fell.

Cove’s two girls — Tarrah, 11, and Tegan, 8, at the time — donned their bike helmets to pick up the ice pellets. Nine-year-old Tate Aronovich did the same.

The hail grew.

"And then all hell broke loose," Cove recalled.

Anne and her husband were on the deck when they watched their neighbour’s fridge sail away.

Harvey went to hold down their own refrigerator as Aronovich headed inside, only to spy the neighbour’s 10-metre trailer rolling away.

She yelled for Harvey to come in and tried to grab her husband.

"He blew away; I couldn’t get him."

Rob Van Biezen, a Green Acres regular, thought it was just a "heck of a windstorm."

Then a trailer belonging to one of Van Biezen’s neighbours was picked up by the winds. The man dove in as it took flight.

Van Biezen took cover in a hedge. He was flung about 10 metres away.

Later, Environment Canada officials would tell Van Biezen the winds were racing up to 287 kilometres an hour.

The noise filled his head, as if 10 motors without exhaust pipes were next to him.

"I remember my hand. I couldn’t see my hand and it was right against my face because everything was black and grey," he said.

And then it was over. When the tornado passed,

Aronovich was lying on downed power lines, her leg facing in the wrong direction. A tree ended up atop her daughter, Taylor, then 11. The pair had matching broken femurs.

A friend had saved the couple’s son Tate by throwing him and her own son underneath a nearby SUV. The chin strap on his helmet almost choked Tate as the wind raced under the vehicle.

Harvey, who had hunkered down behind a car, emerged unscathed and lit a cigar, still in shock from what had just happened.

Cove was bruised with a hole in his calf almost a finger-length deep; his wife, Monica, was wedged under the family van.

She was airlifted to the hospital in Calgary with broken bones, including her pelvis, and a bad laceration on her foot.

The injuries still trouble her today, Cove said.

"She took a beating at the hands of the tornado," he said.

Tarrah was covered in scrapes from when Cove shoved her through the broken window of another vehicle to keep her safe, bits of shattered glass scoring her skin. Flying debris had battered Tegan.

Van Biezen screamed for his kids, who had been in the trailer when the tornado hit.

Shane, then 12, shoved his older sister Ashley, 15, under the bed, protecting them as the roof and walls were ripped from the structure.

The campground was torn apart. Trailers tipped, destroyed, dumped in the lake. Bits of boats, parts of trees, lumber and axes littered the landscape.

Propane tanks were exploding; the smell of sewage filled the air. "It was hell," Van Biezen said.

Two weeks after the storm, Cove told a Herald reporter he was planning to camp on the shore of Pine Lake again.

Ten years later and the Cove family has not been back.

"We feel safer in the mountains. You rarely hear about tornadoes going through the mountains," he said.

But Cove recognizes they came out virtually unscathed, losing just a trailer, a van and the girls’ bikes.

"I remember at the end of the day how lucky we were because not all families got to go home."

Of the Aronovich family, only Harvey has been back, returning to collect things found in the aftermath, like their wallets.

A friend called Harvey on Monday to remind him of the anniversary and see if they were returning to mark it.

Aronovich, who had an anxiety attack just driving to Red Deer a year after the tornado, said she won’t be there.

"I am hoping everyone is happy and has found peace in their losses," she said.

But not all have kept their distance from the Green Acres campground.

Van Biezen was back at the lake almost immediately. For him, it was a key part in the healing process. For his wife, it was a chance to see what her family lived through that day.

"I needed to get back right away," Van Biezen said. "We wanted things back to the best they could be and normal."

The family bought a new trailer and pitched in to rebuild the park they continue to visit to this day.

"Life goes on. Live it to the fullest. Count your blessings and carry on," Van Biezen said. "I learned that from the tornado."

grichards@theherald.canwest.com