Investigators assess damage after a tornado hits Ottawa

OTTAWA A team of investigators is assessing the extent of damage in the aftermath of the tornado that hit Barrhaven, a suburb in southern Ottawa, on Thursday. Investigators say it moved quickly and several homes had structural damage.

“Imagine taking your house and turning it upside down, hanging weights from the roof and then shaking it. That is a good representation of the type of buoyancy forces acting on residential structures,” explains Connell Miller.

Miller is one of the lead technical researchers for Western University’s Northern Tornadoes Project and oversees the damage assessment team in Ottawa.

About 125 homes were damaged by the tornado, the city said Thursday, in Umbra Place, Watercolors Way, Perseus Way, Proxima Terrace, Jockvale Road and Exeter Drive.

“Typical damage seen includes loss of shingles and trim, lift of roofing and broken windows,” Miller said, adding that the researchers also found many damaged sheds, fences and trees.

“The tornado … traveled quickly over the ground,” Miller said, but the tornado’s translational speed does not determine the intensity of the damage.

“Structures would only have experienced the peak wind speed for a short period of time. Fortunately, in the Barrhaven tornado, it only came to the point of losing roofing material.

Typical damage to a home usually follows a certain pattern, Miller explained; first you lose your shingles or siding, then the roof sheathing, then the rafters, then the walls collapse and finally everything is swept away.

“It doesn’t take long for a tornado to cause serious damage to residential buildings.”

Contractors and their cars thronged Marek Way on Friday, one of the streets worst hit.

Some stood on rooftops and threw scattered shingles on the ground. Others threw large pieces of plywood into trailers. One of them lifted a frayed hockey net onto the front of a bulldozer.

A few residents watched from their porches or driveways as debris was collected from their torn-up homes.

Basim and Aya Refat, along with their two children, had to leave their home on the street due to extensive damage.

They said they are staying in hotel accommodations paid for by their landlord and don’t expect to be able to return home in a few months.

Aya Refat said she and her two young daughters huddled under a table and barricaded themselves with a chair as the tornado swept through. She covered her daughters with a blanket to protect them from flying glass.

“So scary. I couldn’t see anything,” she said Friday. “Everything went away. The floor moved. The window was broken.”

Aaron Jaffe, a technical researcher working with Miller, said the investigation is still in its early stages, but the tornado appears to have had a path more than 100 feet wide and several miles long.

Jaffe said they are in the process of evaluating the tornado through the Enhanced Fujita Scale — a scale used to measure the severity of tornadoes in Canada and the US.

He said initial indications suggest Thursday’s storm may have spawned an EF-1 or EF-2 tornado, which can produce winds between 86 and 135 mph and cause moderate to severe damage.

“The recent EF4 tornado in Didsbury, Alberta had homes with total wall collapse, which is almost as bad as it gets,” Miller added.

The July 1 Didsbury EF4 tornado was one of Canada’s strongest and most destructive recorded tornadoes.

Western Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP) recorded 117 tornadoes across Canada during the 2022 season.

Irem Koca is an Ottawa general assignment reporter for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @iremreports

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