A tornado left a three-kilometer swath of destruction as it made its way through residential properties and a campground west of Innisfail last week, eerily reminiscent of a killer tornado that struck Pine Lake in July 2000.
A total of three confirmed tornadoes touched down in central Alberta on Thursday evening, July 7, including one that hit farms and Kelly’s Campground about 10 kilometres west of Innisfail.
Members of the Red Deer Fire Department, Innisfail Fire Department, the RCMP, Alberta Sheriffs, Red Deer Search and Rescue and Guardian Ambulance responded to the area where the tornado was reported as touching down, on RR 21 south of Cottonwood Rd (Twp. Rd. 352). Amazingly, there were no injuries.
Darryl Rusnak, the past-president of the Innisfail Fish and Game Association, which owns Kelly’s Campground on the banks of the Little Red Deer River, said they had enough warning to call the campground and ask people to leave.
“Nobody was hurt,” he said while surveying the damage at the campground, which is located south of Little Red Deer Rd. “That’s the number one thing.”
The tornado toppled trees, some as tall as 50 ft., as it made its way north through the campground. According to Brian Tibbets, 39, an association member from Red Deer, there were still 13 people in the campground when the tornado touched down.
“It was eerily quiet,” Tibbets recalled of the moment the tornado hit. Heavy rain and golf ball-sized hail had started to fall as he arrived at the campground shortly after 5 p.m. on July 8.
Those campers staying on the north side of the campground gathered together once the tornado had passed and made their way to the south side of the property to assist four campers who were trapped in their sites.
Meanwhile, Monica Kaban and Mike Burlein, who own a beef cattle operation and several horses along RR 21, just off of the Cottonwood Road, saw some “really ugly clouds” starting to form late in the evening.
“We saw it build up and start to spin,” Burlein explained, adding he and Kaban then jumped in their car and took refuge in their neighbour’s weigh scale.
“It [the tornado] lasted about three minutes, according to our neighbour,” said Kaban.
But in that short time, Burlein said the roof was blown off the weigh scale building, and the walls came down on their car.
“We’re alive,” Burlein sighed, adding the car is still under the wall, but he and Kaban weren’t hurt.
“And our house is still standing, which is surprising.”
Although their house is still standing, Burlein and Kaban’s property sustained extensive damage – hundreds of thousands of dollars worth, Berlein estimated.
The majority of the roof of the farm’s horseback riding arena was blown off and the walls caved in; fencing around the property also sustained a lot of damage; a holiday trailer was blown over; shingles and pieces of siding are missing from several other buildings.
Friends and neighbours stopped by Kaban and Burlein’s home to offer support and help.
On the other side of RR 21, Andy Jones and Corrine Alstott came home to find their dreams had been torn to pieces.
“We’ve only owned this house for one week,” Alstott said, looking out over her wind-torn yard and buildings.
“We weren’t here when it happened. We were in Calgary, visiting our son, and our neighbour called and said we had better get home.”
Alstott said she and Jones arrived home around 9:45 p.m. on Thursday night, but she said the range road and their driveway wasn’t accessible because of downed trees.
“I walked in from the highway,” she explained. “It was all gone. All I could think was, ‘Oh my God. What bad luck.’”
The neighbour that had alerted them to the tornado is also Alstott and Jones’ employer, and they bought the house to be in closer proximity to work.
“We knew this was our dream place, and we loved it the minute we saw it,” Alstott said of their home. “It was beautiful. We spent all of our savings getting this place.”
Going forward, Alstott and Jones said they don’t know what they’ll do.
“We don’t really have a plan. Fix it, I guess,” said Jones, with Alstott adding they will also need to get their insurance company out to investigate.
“You never imagine it will happen to you,” said Alstott. “It’s very unreal.”
The tornado blew down the garage near the house, with only the parking pad left as any evidence a garage once sat there. The tornado also took siding off the house, blew the roof off the barn and took down several trees, just to name some of the damage caused.
Back at Kelly’s Campground, Red Deer County peace officers went there on Friday, going door-to-door to speak with those campers who experienced the wrath of the tornado.
Rusnak said cleaning up the campground, which is the main source of income for the 130-member association, would be a “huge” undertaking.
“It’s devastating for us,” he said, explaining heavy equipment would have to be brought in to clean up the mess. “We’ll get it done. We always do.”
A power line technician from the Central Alberta Rural Electrification Association, a consumer-owned utility with its main office in Innisfail, was one of the first on scene after the tornado touched down outside Innisfail.
Corey Tibble was on call Thursday night and began repairing power lines in the aftermath of the storm around 5:30 p.m.
His first call for a power outage took him west of Bergen.
Tibble said on his way to that first call, the sky just west of Olds was dark and swirling clouds were starting to form.
Tibble also responded to power outages near Eagle Hill, Bowden and then west of Innisfail.
It wasn’t until about 8:30 p.m. when Tibble said he received the call for an outage on the line that serves Kaban and Burlein.
“I couldn’t get down Range Road 21,” Tibble said, motioning to the downed trees that littered the road that night. Instead, he had to drive through a field to get access to the power line.
Despite the damage inflicted on several residents, Tibble said there weren’t a lot of power outages. “It’s surprising for a storm like that.”
But broken power lines meant a long night of work, which continued all day Friday, as well.
Michaela Johnstone is a freelance writer living and working in Innisfail
