More than 100 homes damaged after tornado hits suburb of Ottawa

The remnants of broken fences, blown windows and torn-off roofs littered a southern Ottawa neighborhood on Thursday after a tornado hit with little warning.

After the skies cleared, families sat outside on their porches watching for fallen poles and uprooted trees as emergency services and hydropower crews worked to clear debris and restore power.

Although residents described themselves as shaken and stressed, there were no deaths or serious injuries.

Environment Canada confirmed at least one tornado had hit the Ottawa area just after noon on Thursday in Half Moon Bay, a neighborhood in the suburb of Barrhaven.

Later on Thursday, it confirmed that a tornado also touched down in Mirabel, Que., north of Montreal. It said no injuries or damage were reported.

Another as-yet unconfirmed tornado hit an area with no built infrastructure southwest of Montreal in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Que. affected and caused no damage.

About 125 homes were damaged in Barrhaven, said Kim Ayotte, the general manager of emergency and protection services for the city of Ottawa.

He told reporters late in the afternoon that most of the damage involved roofs ripped off houses, broken windows and damage from falling trees.

“It’s a variety of damage, from minor damage to pretty big damage,” he said.

He said only one minor injury had been reported involving someone who had a cut on his foot.

Monica Vaswani, a warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment Canada, said several funnel clouds were reported in the Ottawa area Thursday afternoon, but only one tornado had been confirmed by mid-afternoon.

The community is located about 14 miles south of Parliament Hill in the city’s fast-growing south side. The area consists of detached houses and townhouses that have only been built in recent years.

Vaswani said the tornado has been confirmed through videos posted to social media showing debris being “lifted and rotated”.

An expert from the Northern Tornadoes Project at Western University in London, Ontario, is heading to the area to help determine the speed of the tornado, she said.

Laurie Gillespie told The Canadian Press that her 82-year-old mother and her sister were in the house they share on Watercolors Way when her sister noticed a storm and stepped outside to pull up a chair so it wouldn’t blow away.

“Just as she came back in, the back window blew in and the screen flew across the room and landed at my mother’s feet,” said Gillespie.

The house, where Helen Feltham has lived for three years, suffered significant damage. The windows in the living room, bathroom and bedroom all blew in, spraying glass everywhere, while much of the roof was ripped off.

“The curtains on the bathroom window were sucked right out and ended up on the roof,” says Gillespie, who was not home at the time.

She said she lives about 15 minutes away and drove over as soon as she got the call that the storm had happened. By the time she got there, the streets were already flooded with emergency workers and even a representative from the developer who is building homes nearby.

He comforted her mother, held her close and gently told her it was over.

“She is extremely shocked,” said Gillespie, who drove her mother from the area to her own home.

Gillespie said there is damage in a two to three block radius around her mother’s house. Some roofs were ripped apart and foam blocks used as insulation in the attics exploded.

“It was literally snowing Styrofoam outside,” she said.

There were also many downed trees and some damaged hydroelectric power plants in the area.

Nearby Merak Way and Umbra Place streets were also in poor condition on Thursday afternoon.

Deepak Singh, who owns a rented house on Merak Way, said he will have to move a family with two children while the damage to the house is repaired.

He speculated that the repair could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Between losing rent, deductibles and paying for temporary housing for his tenants, he said he expects to lose something like $10,000 in the near future.

“It’s very stressful,” Singh said. “But people are safe.”

On Wednesday, Environment Canada had warned that Thursday’s weather could bring with it the possibility of severe thunderstorms that could spawn tornadoes. At 12:28 p.m., the Weather Bureau issued a tornado warning for much of eastern Ontario.

Gillespie said the tornado hit her mother’s home sometime between 12:30 and 12:45 a.m.

Emergency alerts were issued by the mobile network at around 12:49 p.m

The Ottawa Police Department asked individuals to avoid the Barrhaven area and stay away from downed power lines. Firefighters and employees of the Enbridge gas company visited affected homes, checked for damage, confirmed residents’ safety and shut off gas lines.

Ayotte said the gas lines were shut off for safety reasons, but there were no reports of gas leaks.

Hydro Ottawa said on Twitter that more than 1,600 homes and businesses were without power Thursday afternoon. It said power was expected to be restored to the area by 7 p.m. ET.

A family reunification center was set up in a nearby leisure complex, but by late afternoon only five families had used it. The city said it would remain open as necessary, including at night if affected residents needed it.

Police and journalists took cover there when a second tornado warning was issued for the area around 2:45 p.m., but no additional tornadoes were seen.

Ottawa has been battered by a series of severe storms in recent years. In September 2018, six tornadoes touched down in various places in the Ottawa area and across the river in Gatineau, Que.

Dozens of homes were damaged and 25 people were injured. A tornado struck a power plant in town, cutting power to about half of the town’s homes, some for days.

In May 2022, the city was hit hard by a derecho, a long, straight line of storms with winds often exceeding 100 km/h, which damaged dozens of homes and toppled power lines like matchsticks. Power outages once again stretched across large parts of the city and some were not restored for weeks.