18,000 homes still without power in southern Manitoba after severe storm

Manitoba Hydro says 28,000 homes were left in the dark after a severe storm swept through southern Manitoba on Wednesday night, causing widespread power outages.

Most of the affected customers are in Winnipeg, the public utility says, but there are several outages outside the capital as well.

As of 5 p.m. on Friday, around 10,000 customers had power restored, leaving around 18,000 without.

On Gendreau Avenue in St. Norbert, a tree absolutely crushed a Honda Ridgeline. Further up the street, complete carnage.

Liam Brown, 12, was at home with his sister and father during the storm, and he’s still reeling over it.

“Boom! And I freaked out and jumped right back into bed,” Brown explained. “I looked outside, and I don’t know, like 10 trees were down and like oh my gosh, I was like what are we gonna do. Are we gonna die? What if a tree falls on us?”

Manitoba Hydro says high winds, heavy rain and lightning brought down trees, poles and power lines, resulting in more than 500 separate outages.

Crews were “assessing damage and making areas safe” on Thursday.

“We are prioritizing the largest outages first to restore power to the greatest number of customers as quickly as possible. We appreciate your patience,” it wrote on social media.

“We can’t provide estimated restoration times yet as crews are still assessing a large number of outages scattered across a wide area,” the utility added in a news release.

Additional crews have been assigned to outage restoration work, including construction crews and contractors diverted from ongoing projects.

Next door to the Brown family, John and Linda Reavley, who have been living in the neighbourhood since 1974, said they remember when the downed tree in their front yard was just a twig.

“I heard nothing, and at about 5:30-6 o’clock this morning, I couldn’t believe my eyes at what I saw out the window. And it was really, really scary because it was directly in our bedroom,” said Linda Reavley.

Just up the street, two more cars, which at a glance look to be unscathed, but just a little deeper, one car completely destroyed.

Environment Canada says Winnipeg’s Richardson International Airport saw gusts up to 91 kilometres per hour. It says Brandon was hit by peak winds of 133 kilometres per hour.

The City of Winnipeg said it received 689 service calls.

“I love thunderstorms, and that put me a little bit on my toes, to say the least,” said Keith Waskul.

Jackie Halbert Waskul, a St Norbert resident, said, “Wind, wind happened. I’ve never seen anything like it. We have trees behind us that are currently bent sideways. And that is from the wind last night.”

Emma Landel, 14, was at home on Pembina with her mom. The property actually sold earlier in the evening Wednesday; their fence was blown open.

“I was scrolling TikTok, and I looked out the window to see what was going on. And the corner over there was kind of coming off. So I let my mom know, and it did,” said Landel. “A little nervous, because obviously we just sold the house, so we need to repair this before the next person moves in.”

The storm also brought heavy rain, but its fast movement meant there was little accumulation.

Cleanup efforts are also underway in areas like Lorette, where fallen trees and damaged homes are showing just how strong the winds were.

“I love storms greatly, and it’s quite a known joke that every time a system is coming our way, it bypasses us. Last night it came out of nowhere. There was no warning. It hit us fast and hard, and it was a little scary,” said April Wells, a Lorette resident.

Wells has lived in Lorette on and off since 1988, and says the excitement of watching another Manitoba storm didn’t last long.

“Then all of a sudden out of nowhere this wall of wind came in that. It’s like somebody opened a floodgate and the wall of wind came in, and it was so hard and so loud and so intense that I jumped up, I grabbed my dog, we went in the bathroom because that’s what you do. And then I was like, my cats, my cats,” said Wells.

“Then I phoned my sister-in-law, shaking, and the power was surging. And she says, well, come over. I said, I’m not leaving my house right now. She said, well, then I’ll come to you. I said, well, if you feel brave enough. Then I had to go and lock my door. And then I rescued my cats. And we were all hiding in the bathroom in the tub, like you’re supposed to do, because I’m on the top floor.”

When the winds finally eased, Wells went outside and noticed significant damage, with her condo appearing to be the hardest-hit area in town.

“We’ve got roof damage over here. On my building, we’ve got roof damage with everything rolling up. My garbage can lid was on Main Street. All the trees along the main street have snapped, and the RM is now taking care of those,” Wells explained.

Just a few doors away, neighbours were already helping clear fallen branches and debris. Steve Kiedyk says lending a hand is simply part of living in a small community.

“If it wasn’t a tornado, it was probably close to hurricane winds like that. I’ve never actually seen the trees bend that,” said Kiedyk.

“A clean community is a nice community, right? And this is my community, so I have no problems picking up a few sticks here and there and helping people.”

While Environment Canada could not confirm any tornadoes touching down, they said this incident was most likely a powerful what they call a “downburst,” when winds exceed 100km/h.

–With files from The Canadian Press