Jessi Olsen said she's recovered "what's important" - hers kids baby pictures, mementos - and everyone is safe after extreme wind destroyed her Cypress County home on Monday. The family of four says they will rebuild. - News Photo Collin Gallant
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
Families in Cypress County are surveying damage on Tuesday and recounting near misses after extreme wind gusts tore off roofs, tossed trailers, twisted irrigation pivots and sent possessions flying across acreages.
Jessi Olsen was driving back to her home on the Holsom Road on Monday afternoon when she had to stop a half-kilometre away as waves of rain caused a whiteout.
Her cousin and oldest son were at the acreage, trying to call and tell her to stay put in the city as a massive black cloud formation headed their way.
Then they dove for cover.
“I saw it going north, then it turned and came straight at the house,” said Dave Olsen, who is visiting from British Columbia.
“I saw a giant big black mass, so I yelled (at Rex) to stay in the basement, and I literally saw the roof just come off. I managed to dive under a bed with the dog.
“The rest was just noise and mayhem, then we crawled out of the rubble.”
“It got very quiet,” said Rex. “It was very weird.”
What happened is still being determined by Environment Canada, which originally reported a funnel cloud had touched down in the area of Highway 523 (Holsom Road). It knocked out power to 7,500 homes and businesses in Medicine Hat, Redcliff and Cypress County into Tuesday.
At the bend south on Holsom Road, sustained gusts badly damaged at least three homes at the long bend that is lined with country estates, and potentially many more as county officials continued surveying the area Tuesday.
Clothes, insulation, scraps of lumber, even a couch were caught up on a barbed wire fence along the Olsen property. Sections of roof on neighbouring buildings are gone. Toppled irrigation pivots run past power poles that were replaced overnight.
“It is really devastating for these families,” said Cypress County manager Tarolyn Aaserud at a morning update in Dunmore.
She said crews continued to assess damage, utility workers are replacing downed lines, and people should avoid the area, especially if they are just touring to get a look at the damage.
“Let these people get to work and do what they’ve got to do,” she said.
The county will consider placing bins in the area for residents to dispose of damaged property or construction waste.
No one was seriously injured. The cost to agricultural producers in crops and livestock from wind and heavy hail in places is still being tabulated.
Jessi and her husband Matt have lived on the property for about 15 years with two sons, making it their own, and the damage is a shock, said Brian, but not insurmountable.
“I thought it would pass and then we’d go home, but I turned the corner and holy,” said Jessi on Tuesday of first seeing her house, the upstairs loft ripped off and pushed onto trees she planted nearby.
A light greenhouse is long gone, but Jessi said the plants survived, and she likes it better that way.
“It was a terrifying moment,” she said. “Our clothes survived, and I found our baby books, everything that’s important is accounted for, some of the kids toys from when they were little.
“Everything else can be replaced… When we moved in there wasn’t a blade of grass. We’ll rebuild.”
The strength of the wind was also apparent at the site.
It peeled the plastic coating off Dave’s license plate, but left a bed full of tools in place. It was parked in front of a shop that was lifted off its cement base and tossed in pieces about the yard.
In the driveway, however, there was a “perfectly good” watermelon, sitting without even a bruise. Jars of pickles were left in their place, but motorcycles were flipped over.
A heavy work trailer – belonging to a neighbour on the next section – came to rest in the Brown’s yard, but Jessi’s tomato plants were unscathed.
Ryan DePape lives across the road from the Browns, and the City of Medicine Hat firefighter was at home with two sons aged younger than six when his attached garage was sheared clean off the main building.
“All the (house) windows in the front blew at the same time – glass goes everywhere – at then this flies in,” he said pointing to a splintered, pointed two-by-four that was driven into the drywall of his foyer.
“I dove down the stairs.”
There he joined his sons, but the trio were trapped. Even more concerning, DePape heard and smelled rushing natural gas from the hook-up in the garage. He had to wait for utility crews to arrive before they were extracted.
“We’ve poured our heart and soul into this home, we love it out here” he said walking through the living room, his boots crunching on glass shards. “We finished pens and the fences out back. Both vehicles are trashed.
“It looks like a long road ahead. We’ll do what it takes, but just prioritizing right now.”
[Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct a name.]
