Large tornado in central Alberta damages homes, but no serious injuries were reported

a tornado which slammed into central Alberta on Saturday afternoon, destroyed homes and killed livestock, but no serious injuries have been reported so far.

Environment and Climate Change Canada has one tornado warning at 1:50 p.m. local time, noting that meteorologists were tracking a severe thunderstorm in Mountain View County that was tornado near Didsbury, Alta.

RCMP said they had received reports of a major tornado in the province along Highway 2 at Highway 581, ranging from one to two kilometers wide.

Police said numerous homes were damaged, and while they initially said there were reports of injuries, Cpl. Gina Slaney later said no injuries were known yet.

The tornado warning was later terminated.

Dean Allan, deputy mayor of Carstairs, said the twister passed between Didsbury and Carstairs and damaged 12 homes.

“A few have been completely destroyed. There were no fatalities, thankfully only minor injuries,’ Allan said, adding that some livestock had also been lost.

“All in all, everything went well, or as good as it gets for something like that.”

Carstairs fire chief Jordan Schaffer said five homes were completely destroyed, including one where rescuers had to extricate a woman from her basement.

“By digging through the rubble, we were able to get her out without a scratch,” Schaffer said.

“The house was 100 percent gone.”

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 explained that turning back on the divided highway would be nearly impossible been because of barriers.

“You make a decision in a split second, and we just thought, well, we better just take a closer look 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 scary to think that you might get caught on the highway without hiding and not looking for shelter anywhere,” she said.

Storm chaser Aaron Jayjack posted video online of a tornado cross a motorway near Didsbury, appearing to damage two rural houses on either side of the road.

In the video, he calls out to anyone who might be in one of the homes but can’t get any closer due to downed utility lines blocking the driveway.

Fortis Alberta, which supplies electricity to the area, reported outages in both Didsbury and Carstairs on Saturday afternoon.

Tanya Croft, a spokeswoman for the utility, said late afternoon that the crew was still assessing the damage, but she believed most service had been restored.

The City of Carstairs posted on Facebook that water usage restrictions were in place and would remain so until electricity was restored.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted a message to people injured in the tornado or whose homes have been damaged that Canadians are “there for you”.

“While officials continue to monitor the situation, please stay safe,” Trudeau said on Twitter.