At about 8:15 p.m. on July 7 a nervous Monica Kaban was looking out her window across her acreage towards the blackening sky to the southwest.
It was not only eerily ominous but there also came a clear frightening sign that she and her husband Mike Burlein had better leave their home.
“You could see it coming,” she said. “I could see a silhouette of a witch. It was time to get out.”
What transpired over the next 10 minutes was a rush of pure terror and adrenaline. Kaban and her husband, who she had just driven home from Calgary after an appointment with a surgeon, frantically jumped into their pick-up truck and raced north on RR 21 to Cottonwood Rd.
“We went left there. It was beating on the windshield, rain, and hall – I don’t know. We had to get cover,” she said.
As they drove into a neighbour’s yard and into a long, narrow weigh scale shed, pounding hail smashed the windshield. But they were safe. A few minutes later it was all over. The tornado of 2011 had passed. It had left a three-kilometre swath of destruction while tearing its way through Kaban’s 160-acre property. As it moved north the twister caused further damage to other acreages and to Kelly’s Campground, where miraculously no one was hurt.
“We were lucky, really, really lucky,” said Keith Greenwood, caretaker of the campground whose trailer was nearly flattened by fallen trees. “It was a hair-raising experience. It was too late to run and nowhere to run.”
For Monica and Mike, the final days of July are the start of what will be a long and frustrating process to rebuild their lives.
“My house trailer was lifted off its base. It’s probably toast,” said Kaban.
On July 18, 11 days after the tornado, she was still cleaning up her acreage where she has the Rolling Hills Arena, a popular venue for training horses that has become a rural institution with countless locals since being built in 1994.
But there will be no riding in the arena for many weeks, even months. The tornado slammed the structure. The roof caved in, and it now has to be rebuilt. Most of the out buildings on her acreage were either destroyed or badly damaged. The tornado ravaged the range road almost the entire kilometre and a half length from her acreage to Cottonwood Rd. Eleven days later work crews with heavy machinery were still doing repairs.
“This is the worst, the worst of the worst,” said Kaban of Mother Nature’s early summer wrath.
She and her husband are now dealing with insurance companies, Red Deer County and the province for repairs and for future cost reimbursement. It will be a long road ahead. She estimated the total damage could add up to be a “good half million.”
In the meantime, members of Innisfail’s Noble Riders 4-H Club were on hand July 18 to help clean up the acreage.
“We are going to help Monica out. It looks awful,” said club president Jorieke Vennik as she looked over the destroyed riding arena. “We have always used this arena for Achievement Day and for riding lessons in the winter. Now it’s gone.”
Aaron Wright, a parent of a 4-H member, said it was the duty of the club to help out as much as it could, as the arena has been a huge benefit to the rural community over the last 17 years.
“Monica has been really good to us. We are just repaying her kindness,” said Wright. “As soon as we can get it (arena) back up and running it will help us.”
As for the folks at Kelly’s Campground they feel lucky and grateful as well that none of the 13 people who were at the site, and experienced the terror of July 7 tornado, were injured. But Greenwood added that while everyone feels fortunate it was not a repeat of the Pine Lake tornado tragedy of a decade ago everyone’s lives were changed.
“My daughter, who is handicapped, was frightened nearly to death. She almost went into convulsions. She was in hysterics. We had to get her back home to Eckville,” said Greenwood, adding that damage estimates with Red Deer County are still being calculated.
“Things will never be the same.”
