Links to the Breadcrumb trail
- News
- Local news
“One year for six or seven days,” said Bryce Conrad of Hydro Ottawa, describing efforts to reconnect nearly 180,000 customers.
Cleaning continues at Hammond Golf and Country Club after a recent storm knocked down several hundred mature trees on the course. Photo by ERROL MCGIHON / POSTMEDIA
Content of the article
A high chorus of chainsaws replaced the cracking of golf balls this week at Hammond Golf and Country Club, where last Saturday’s storm devastated 300 mature pine trees.
Advertising 2
This ad is not yet loaded, but your article continues below.
Content of the article
Volunteers work all week to cut down and cut down fallen trees, collect and burn mountains of hair. Two huge fires sent clouds of pine-scented smoke hovering over the region, several areas left untouched by a thunderstorm that suddenly moved and within 20 minutes left lasting scars on the landscape – leaving 180,000 homes and businesses without power.
Most of Hydro Ottawa’s power system was expected to be restored on Friday night.
But in the worst-hit areas – Cumberland, Stitsville, Knoxdale and Maryvale – the cleanup will take weeks. The cost of this cleanup is expected to reach millions of dollars.
Restoring what was destroyed by the storm can take years and millions more. Homes and porches are cracked, bent and broken by falling trees. In rural areas east of Ottawa, farmers have lost barns, sheds and garages.
Advertising 3
This ad is not yet loaded, but your article continues below.
Content of the article
In Sarsfield, the church bell tower and the bell tower collapsed to the ground under the pressure of the wind. Near Highway 417 and Hunt Club Road, four Hydro One steel transmission towers collapsed.
Four people in the region died under the hail of a storm of falling trees and branches, while another drowned in the Ottawa River after her pontoon boat capsized.
“I don’t think people appreciate the scale of this event,” Hydro Ottawa CEO Bryce Conrad said in an interview Friday.
Bryce Conrad is the President and CEO of Hydro Ottawa. Photo by Jean Levac / Postmedia
Conrad said the storm adversely affected every part of the 1,100-square-kilometer Hydro Ottawa coverage area and was many times more destructive than the 1998 ice storm and 2018 tornado, which caused more localized damage.
“This storm was unlike anything any of us had ever seen or encountered before,” he said. “It was as if a weather bomb had blown out our electrical system.
Advertising 4
This ad is not yet loaded, but your article continues below.
Content of the article
The storm swept the region across a wide front and pulled out 325 ladders. The ice storm knocked down 50 ladders, and the tornado that struck Dunrobin and parts of Nepian took 80.
Hydro Ottawa typically replaces about 340 utility poles throughout the year.
“We actually do one year’s worth of work in six or seven days,” Conrad said.
The damage to the electrical system was so great that half of Hydro Ottawa’s 360,000 customers were disconnected from the grid. This meant that the electrical infrastructure that supported these customers was either lying on the ground or damaged by trees and wind.
“We had to rebuild half of our system to get people back to the net,” said Conrad, who was in Calgary for his mother-in-law’s funeral when the storm struck. He has rarely left his office since returning on Sunday.
Advertising 5
This ad is not yet loaded, but your article continues below.
Content of the article
As damage assessments spilled over after the storm, water power plant employees began gathering the resources – poles, trucks and personnel – needed to deal with the unprecedented situation. Contractors and utility teams in Ontario, Quebec and the northeastern United States were called in to help.
Hydro engineers are pioneering new electricity routes to help some neighborhoods recharge. In parts of Bayshore, for example, power is now being diverted from Kanata, not the Merivale substation, Conrad said. A similar situation exists in parts of Barrhaven.
Conrad said the system should be fully restored within a week, but then inspection teams will have to assess other parts of the network for damage that is not yet clear.
Advertising 6
This ad is not yet loaded, but your article continues below.
Content of the article
There is no doubt that Hydro Ottawa needs to consolidate its infrastructure, Conrad said, given the damage caused by tornadoes, floods and thunderstorms over the past five years.
The company has already made improvements to its generating stations, Conrad said, and will study its north-south transmission lines – those along Woodruff Avenue, Maryvale Road, Greenbank Road, Hawthorne Road – to see how they can be reinforced.
But it would be prohibitively expensive, he warned, to build a system capable of withstanding winds of 190 kilometers per hour, which touched in some places during Saturday’s storm.
The force of the storm was depicted graphically at Hammond Golf Club, where hundreds of pine trees were broken in half like twigs. The trees were planted 45 years ago by the course’s founder Ernest Leonard, the grandfather of the current owner of the course, Leonard Hendron.
Advertising 7
This ad is not yet loaded, but your article continues below.
Content of the article
“The trees fell like a house of cards,” said Hendron, 40.
Leonard Hendron, owner of Hammond Gold and Country Club, is throwing branches into the fire as he helps clean up after a thunderstorm felled more than 300 trees in the area. Photo by ERROL MCGIHON / Postmedia
A golf tournament was underway as an afternoon storm swept Cumberland’s agricultural fields to the west. A horn sounded to warn the players to seek shelter.
A video taken by the Hammond Club captures the violence of the storm: The wind is so fierce that the trees can’t turn back and forth to dissipate energy. The video captures a large pine tree pushed by the relentless wind, which breaks in half under the load.
“It was chaos and destruction,” Hendron said. “There was a lot of wind, a lot of rain, a lot of howling, the sound of trees clicking.
Everyone left the course safely. But it was not until the storm subsided that the full extent of the damage was revealed: the trees were piled up like cord wood along the fairway of holes 1, 4, 5, 10 and 18.
Advertising 8
This ad is not yet loaded, but your article continues below.
Content of the article
Almost all the trees were evergreen. Hendron’s grandfather had planted mostly pine trees so that the fairways would not be covered with leaves in the fall. But pine trees with shallow roots and soft wood were among the species most vulnerable to strong winds.
The playground was built on farmland owned by the family since 1884. Gendron inherited the playground at the age of 23 when his mother died in 2005.
“I have been here for many years and I have seen many storms, but I have never experienced such a storm,” he said.
Volunteers clean up fallen trees at Hammond Golf and Country Club. Photo by Errol McGuigan / Postmedia
About 50 volunteers, many of them members of the club, came to the course every day this week to help cut down, clear and burn the felled trees. Gendron offered them a free lunch and beer from Broken Stick Brewing Company’s own brewery.
Advertising 9
This ad is not yet loaded, but your article continues below.
Content of the article
Pierre Bertiom, 63, a retired civil servant, has been volunteering all week to help clean up. “We just love playing here: this is my retirement plan,” Bertiaume said. “When we saw what the track looked like after the storm, it was devastating, but at least the fairways will be a little more forgiving now.
The nearby cities of Sarsfield, Hammond, Bourges and Saint-Pascal-Beylon have suffered some of the worst property damage in the region.
In Saint-Pascal-Baylon, large trees weigh on two houses on Du Lac Road. An owner’s garage was swept away; another collapsed a barn on a school bus.
Bus owner Ghislain Leduc said he could not remove the bus because he feared the rest of the barn would collapse. “We are still figuring out what to do,” he said. “I think we’ll have to empty the barn first.”
Back at Hammond Golf Club, Hendron was preparing to reopen the course on Saturday morning.
“We will have to rethink the way the course looks,” he said. “But what the community has done here makes you feel good: it’s a real silver line.”
In Saint-Pascal-Beylon, one of the cities east of Ottawa, was hit hard by a violent storm, one owner of a house had his garage swept away and another had his barn collapsed on a school bus. Photo by Andrew Duffy / Postmedia
Share this article on your social network
Advertising 1
This ad is not yet loaded, but your article continues below.
Sign up to receive daily headlines from Ottawa Citizen, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.
By clicking on the register button, you agree to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of our emails. Postmedia Network Inc. | 365 Bloor Street East, Toronto, Ontario, M4W 3L4 | 416-383-2300
Thank you for registering!
Email is welcome. If you don’t see it, please check your junk folder.
The next issue of Ottawa Citizen Headline News will soon be …
Add Comment