INNISFAIL – Mother Nature’s prolonged summer wrath broke through the first day of August with special nasty fury.
At least 50 motor vehicles were caught in the crossfire of rotating storms on Highway 2 in the Antler Hill area during the early evening on Aug. 1 and were pummelled by hail the size of baseballs; stranding motorists and causing serious vehicular damage and some minor injuries.
When the storm’s rage left, Highway 2 on Antler Hill looked like a disaster zone with shattered glass strewn in all directions.
Motorists and their passengers stood outside the vehicles, dazed and waiting for tow trucks to arrive.
Meanwhile, in Innisfail just a few kilometres to the south, power lines were knocked down on two residential streets. Trees were sliced up throughout the battered community, forcing the town into major clean-up mode.
“It was certainly unique. I've never seen anything like it before; probably in the range of 50 vehicles severely damaged by the hail; broken side windows and windshields,” said Gary Leith, the Town of Innisfail’s fire chief whose crews responded to the first emergency call at 6:20 p.m. on Aug. 1.
“A couple of people had some minor injuries as a result of glass. The vehicles were undriveable,” he added. “We had a second storm front coming through. Some people were evacuated to Innisfail. A fleet of tow trucks came and removed vehicles throughout the evening.”
He said the main damage in the area of Antler Hill was on the north side, between Old Pole Road and Antler Hill.
“The initial crews triaged damaged vehicles and cleared them for serious injuries and stopped at one motor vehicle collision that had occurred because of poor visibility and the heavy rain and hail,” said Leith, adding there were no injuries in the crash and emphasized most overall damage was caused by hail, and not by collisions.
“And then we started to assist moving people away from Antler Hill to either Gasoline Alley, or if they couldn’t arrange rides, we brought them to Innisfail.”
He said emergency responders used fire department vehicles and a Town of Innisfail handi-bus to move stranded motorists out of the devastated area.
“We had multiple storm fronts coming through that area, so it was important to get them off,” said Leith. “Some of them were families with young children who were quite petrified as a result of their vehicle being smashed by the hail.
“There were a couple who were moved to the hospital who had minor injuries.”
Leith said the Innisfail Fire Department was assisted by Innisfail RCMP. He said emergency responders closed down their operation at around 10 p.m.
He said the fire department also had two calls of power lines being levelled on 56th and 44th streets. He added the town also received calls of falling trees on properties.
“It was my neighbour’s trees. They are big spruce trees,” said Innisfail resident Linda Biggart, who lives on 57th Street. “One tree almost hit the house but just scraped it, and the other tree came across the garage and it was the neighbour’s tree too. The tree is still up there. The one that just missed the house totalled our garden shed.”
Ken Kowalchuk, the town's communications coordinator, said Town of Innisfail work crews will be spending the next couple of days cleaning up the debris left from the storm.
“From the town’s perspective most of the damage was done to trees. There's obviously a lot of branches down in town, so our crews are going to be working over the next couple of days to clean up that up,” said Kowalchuk.
He said the town will have extended hours at the waste transfer station in southwest Innisfail for citizens to bring fallen tree branches from the storm.
