Environment and Climate Change Canada said the twister tore a path of destruction Saturday afternoon between the towns of Carstairs and Didsbury.
Officials vary in their estimate of homes damaged, ranging from nine to 14, with a handful completely flattened. No one was seriously hurt in the storm, although a woman was found trapped in her basement after the tornado destroyed her house as she was beneath it.
On Monday, the Northern Tornadoes Project surveyed the damage. It’s a Western University unit focused on understanding tornadoes in Canada.
“Obviously, this was a very significant event,” said Connell Miller, a survey lead with the group. He spoke Monday with Loren McGinnis on the Calgary Eyeopener.
Calgary Eyeopener7:26Mountain View County tornado
A powerful tornado destroyed homes north of Calgary over the weekend. We chat with a researcher surveying the damage.
Based on what he’s seen on the ground, Miller said the weekend tornado was likely more powerful than EF-2, categorized on the enhanced Fujita scale by wind speeds of 178 to 217 km/h.
According to Miller, roughly 95 per cent of tornadoes that touch down in Canada are rated EF-2 or less. He described these as “less severe,” although they are still powerful enough to topple trees or blow off a home’s roof.
The tornado that tore through Mountain View County on Saturday was more powerful than these, according to Miller.
“This tornado will definitely fall within that five per cent of tornadoes that are stronger than [EF-2],” he said. “Just where exactly that will fall is still to be determined.”
Miller, an engineering researcher, says his team determines the strength of a tornado by looking at the structure of the homes destroyed and figuring out how powerful the winds would need to be to topple the buildings.
Miller said his team will likely have a rating for the tornado by Tuesday morning. Should it be rated an EF-3, that would mean the winds were between 218 and 266 km/h. If an EF-4, the winds would have ranged between 267 and 322 km/h.
One of the houses destroyed in the storm belonged to Elisa Humphreys. She fled with her dog and cat just moments before her home was blown to pieces. She described the wreckage as looking like an airplane crash.
“What it is, is the total destruction of two homes that have just been shredded and spread everywhere,” she said.
Dozens of people in the local community have turned out over the past few days to help clean up the debris, which included machinery that was thrown from one property to another and large trees uprooted and downed.
Lance Douglas, of Olds, helped organize the ongoing cleanup efforts. He was driving home from Calgary with this son on Saturday when they saw the tornado’s aftermath.
“We were driving by on the highway and saw the devastation,” he said. “We knew the Alberta way is that you just go and help.”
Douglas helped start a Facebook group to organize cleanup efforts, reaching out to the property owners to understand their needs and if they wanted volunteers on their land.
“Everyone’s really happy to have volunteers that are coming out and helping, even those that didn’t [initially] want people on their farm further contacted us, and we’ve been able to send volunteers there, trucks and tools,” Douglas said.
A barbecue on Monday was held to show appreciation to the volunteers. Over the next few days, Douglas said, their efforts will be focused on moving gathered debris to the dump and bringing in large machinery to removed downed trees.
“There’s still miles of work yet to do,” he said.
Damage can be seen near Elisa Humphreys’ home. (Helen Pike/CBC)
Tornadoes in Canada
According to Miller, one of the reasons the Northern Tornadoes Project was founded was to get a better sense of the tornado climatology in Canada.
While official meteorological records indicated around 60 to 70 tornadoes a year in Canada, models suggested the figure should be significantly higher.
The reason the official figure is low, Miller said, is likely a matter of population density. Every year, a number of tornadoes touch down in areas where no one lives — and therefore aren’t reported.
“Since we’ve been founded in 2017, we’ve found that that [tornado] average is closer to 100 to 120 per year,” Miller said.
Terri Lang, a Saskatoon-based meteorologist with Environment Canada, said the tornado came out of a supercell thunderstorm.
“Supercell thunderstorms are the types of thunderstorms that form in very specific conditions,” she said. “These storms form their own environment, and they can last a very, very long time. They kind of feed on themselves, and they can travel hundreds of kilometres, producing all types of severe weather.”
Saturday’s intense heat was a factor — such warmth is required to produce a supercell. But for the formation of a tornado, the key factor is wind shear, with wind changing direction and/or speed over a short distance.
“That allows the storm to spin,” Lang said. “Once the storm is spinning, it’s capable of producing a tornado.”
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
