Alberta tornado witness says tornado hit homes and caused damage, ‘spit’ gas and knocked out power lines
RCMP says 14 homes were impacted and five of those homes were destroyed after a devastating tornado hit Mountain View County in central Alberta.
On Saturday, a tornado one to two kilometers wide swept through the region, RCMP said. Mountain View County includes the communities of Carstairs, Alta., Didsbury, and Olds.
In an update on Saturday night, RCMP said a woman was trapped in her basement when her home above her was destroyed. Carstairs firefighters pulled her from the rubble and she suffered minor injuries. No other injuries have been reported, RCMP said.
RCMP said 25 cows and 20 chickens died and one horse was euthanized.
Carstairs resident Cheryl Beck told CBC she witnessed damaged property about a mile north of that town as she went home after an emergency alarm went off.
Eyewitness says tornado was a ‘monster’
Storm chaser Aaron Jayjack was in the area when the tornado damaged homes about five to nine miles southeast of Didsbury.
“It hit a few buildings, but barely scraped some buildings. I saw a little bit of damage, a little bit of debris,” he said. “And when I decided to get a little bit closer to it, like I did, then it really got stronger and hit a few houses, damaging them quite a bit.”
Jayjack said he stopped his pursuit to check the houses to see if anyone was hurt, but all he heard was the “spitting” of gas from the house and saw the power lines go out.
“I decided it wasn’t safe for me to get closer to home and at that very moment. I saw emergency responders on their way to me. So I decided to let them do their job and continue to do my main tasks. track, following the storm and coming back on the tornado,” he said.
LOOK | Tornado in central Alberta as seen from the highway:
Deborah Bradbury-Dawe, who shared this video with CBC News, said her family was driving from Calgary to Edmonton when they had to pull over because of the tornado near Carstairs, Alta.
“It was just a monster, insane tornado that tracked down the Prairie here in Alberta.”
Lisa Arrowsmith, a former Canadian Press reporter, was driving south on Highway 2 toward Calgary with her husband on Saturday afternoon when she said the sky was getting dark and they could see a very large funnel cloud to their right.
“The thing that came to my mind is that we either need to turn around and go the other way as soon as possible, or we need to try and avoid this,” Arrowsmith said, though she said turning around on the divided highway would have been nearly impossible been because of barriers.
“You make a decision in a split second, and we just thought, well, we better just hide it and hope for the best.”
She said many people had stopped to take a video of the twister. But she kept the pedal down, and after some hail fell on the car, they knew they were finally safe, she said.
“It was very frightening to think that you might get caught on the highway without hiding and not looking for shelter anywhere,” she said.
Environment and climate change Canada had issued a tornado warning at 1:50 p.m. local time noting that meteorologists were tracking a severe thunderstorm in Mountain View County that spawned a tornado near Didsbury, triggering an Alberta Emergency Alert. That warning ended about an hour later.
