Morning wind storm wreaks havoc in Murillo area

Clarence Downey says he’s lucky to have escaped with his life.

The twisted, tangled, shredded mass of sheet metal that slammed into the side of his home lends plenty of credibility to his tale.

Just yesterday the metal formed the wall of an indoor riding stable attached to Downey’s 88-year-old horse barn. But the riding stable, home to the Thunder Bay Therapeutic Riding Association, is no more, ripped apart by a freak windstorm early Friday morning.

The storm cut a swath through rural Murillo, also laying waste to trees, flipping at least one tractor wagon and toppling a $120,000 solar panel array on Nicholetts  Road.

“There was a little bit of hail, so I came out to move my car underneath the shed so it didn’t get any hail damage. I picked up three golf ball-sized pieces of hail to run back into the house and there was a sheet of tin that followed me all the way to the house. I just made it into the house when the tin flew up against the back walls,” Downey said, a little shaken but happy that everyone inside the home was OK, as were the nine horses housed in the barn.

“Then all hell broke loose. The whole 50-foot by 100-foot indoor riding arena was all over the place. Now I know how the people in the southern States feel when they have a disaster like this. It’s crazy.”

Downey, who is hoping his insurance will cover the damage, including a two-by-four that pierced the window of the car he moved to safety, said he’s never seen anything like this up close and in person.

Though officials with Environment Canada said they likely won’t be able to confirm exactly what happened until later Friday afternoon, there’s no doubt in Downey’s mind, his property littered with debris, including toys used as part of the therapeutic riding program.

“My gut feeling, I think we had a tornado go through here. You can see the swath through the trees where it’s knocked down trees all over the place and flipped over a hay wagon. You name it, it’s destroyed.”

Earlier in the summer some Thunder Bay residents were convinced a tornado had come through the city, ripping a portion of the roof off the Thunder Bay International Airport. Government officials later ruled it was a microburst, a rapidly moving system that brings high winds capable of knocking planes out of the sky.

John Spithoff said he started hearing the wind pick up around 7 a.m. on Friday, heard the hail hitting the roof and walls of his Nicholetts Road home.

“All of a sudden we started hearing bigger and bigger bangs as it was hitting us. So we ran out of bed and started looking around. It was just getting light and the wind was whistling through, but it was like whiteout conditions out here,” he said.

“Then we looked out the back window and my wife looked out to where the solar panels were and she said, ‘Oh my God, John, look the solar panels.’ And they blew over. The wind grabbed them and ripped them right off the frame and flopped it onto the ground. I think they’re pretty much destroyed here now.”

Until Friday they were securely bolted to a massive concrete foundation, capable of withstanding winds of up to 140 kilometres-an-hour, Spithoff said.

Hydro One crews were also spotted along John Street Road and other side streets, removing downed trees that had fallen against power lines.