‘It was just chaos’: Winnipeg home collapses, trees uprooted in small tornado

A storm moved through a south Winnipeg neighbourhood on Monday night, leaving behind a path of destruction that community members say they’ve never seen before.

A house in the city’s Whyte Ridge area completely collapsed in the thunderstorm. Nearby, trees were uprooted, windows were smashed and fences went flying.

Firefighters were called to the home on Tolcross Gate at 10:16 p.m. and found the home had sustained extensive structural.

“Crews assessed the scene, shut off the home’s natural gas supply, and secured the area with safety tape. No injuries were reported,” WFPS said.

Colton Smith, 15, was home with his mom when bedlam struck his backyard.

“I was kind of just relaxing in the basement,” Colton recounted. “I just heard this noise that sounded like a train, kinda. Came up stairs, the house alarm went off. And I look out the window and there’s a tree across our yard. Our neighbour’s shed’s in our backyard and all the fences are gone, and it was just chaos.

“It was pretty scary.”

The house next door received some of the worst damage; the property just sold and the new owners where expected to get the keys this week.

“It was so sudden,” Colton said. “Like for sure all of this happened in just a minute. Like you couldn’t even see it go through.”

Colton’s father Jay Smith wasn’t home during the storm and was relieved his family was safe. Now his focus has turned to cleaning up.

“Yeah it’s just really surprising that something like this could happen like this in the city,” said Smith, who added he was “pretty certain” the storm was a tornado.

Meteorologist Brian Proctor with Enviroment Canada confirmed to CityNews that early investigations indicate a small tornado did touch down in Winnipeg between 9-10pm on Monday night, reaching wind gusts up to 100 kilometres an hour.

“We escaped this one with what could have been far worse damage, is probably the best way to word it,” Proctor said. “If this tornado had have been a little bit stronger, a little bit more vigourous in how it developed, we could have seen much more damage to some of those neighbourhoods.

“We could have seen much more winds along that squall line over all the city, stretching off to the north as well. We kind of dodged a little bit of a bullet, and we should consider ourselves somewhat lucky.”

Flooding, power outages

Intense overnight rain in southern Manitoba has created flash flooding left thousands without power.

The Municipality of Boissevain-Morton in the southwest of the province declared a state of local emergency because of the impacts of flooding on its 2,300 residents.

Further north, Manitoba’s disaster management agency issued several flash flood emergency alerts, including for Swan Valley, which was also hit by heavy flooding in early June.

Manitoba Hydro said it had brought on extra crews to respond to widespread outages caused by the wind and rain.

It said that as of Tuesday evening it was working to restore power to around 3,800 customers across the province, including 1,300 in Winnipeg. It warned some residents in Winnipeg, Lac du Bonnet and Parkland region could be without power overnight.

“We have made significant restoration progress since last night; however, we have been getting more reports of outages and damages rolling in throughout the day,” said Scott Powell, director of corporate communications and marketing for Manitoba Hydro.

“As we continue with restoration work, we may also need to take emergency outages to large areas in order to safely complete repairs on damaged equipment.”

The utility says the storm at one point had left about 14,200 without power across southern Manitoba.

–With files from The Canadian Press