Woolwich and Wellesley townships came out of last weekend’s storm largely unscathed, say public works officials.
Despite hail, shelf clouds, and wild wind across the region, come Monday morning there were just some broken branches and a couple uprooted trees in the two townships. Toronto and other parts of southern Ontario didn’t fare as well, with tens of thousands losing power and flights in and out of Pearson Airport delayed.
Just north of the region, an EF-2 tornado passed thru the area of Teviotdale in the Town of Minto, severely damaging one home, while a second home received moderate damage. A chicken barn and a cattle barn were also destroyed.
Kevin Beggs, Wellesley general manager of community services, says he isn’t aware of any damage to homes in the township.
“In the village of Wellesley, it probably affected a dozen places. And for some, branches being broke off to a few trees actually broke right off and uprooted. But it was basically all on private places and I went down today to look and most of it is cleaned up. It was very narrow and just went through a little sweep of the village,” Beggs said.
A power line was also knocked down at the corner of David Street and Queens Bush. The road was closed while hydro crews replaced the pole.
“It would have been on the Queens Bush Road and David Street and then it followed the pond down and got one or two places that back onto the pond, then it went down Maple Leaf Street towards the community centre and uprooted a few there,” Beggs said.
One tree on Moser Young was broken off and a couple branches broke off on Lichty Road. There was no other damage in the township.
“It must have just touched down and went off again,” Beggs said.
Woolwich was much the same.
Barry Baldasaro, Woolwich public works superintendent, says they’ve got the down branches mostly cleaned up.
“We didn’t get a call out during the storm or immediately after the storm. We just did some patrolling on Tuesday and just some down branches here and there, nothing impacting anything that I’m aware of,” Baldasaro said.
North of Elmira saw a bit more action. Trees on Balsam Grove Road and Weisenberg Road lost some branches. They fell onto the sides of the road, not blocking traffic. He doesn’t believe the power went out either.
“Power outages would impact some of our sewage lift systems, two in Elmira, and one in Conestogo,” Baldasaro said. “If the power goes out that also impacts some of the water systems because the ones that are dealing with wells, those are run by the region, the water systems. There are backup generators at all of them. Our backup generators didn’t come on for anything this weekend that I’m aware of. We were lucky.”
