Skip to content

Storm ravages east central communities

EAST CENTRAL — On July 2, several communities throughout the region suffered heavy damage from a storm, including Carrot River, Arborfield, Zenon Park and Aylsham.
Storm
Betty and Ken Edwards from Arborfield were one of the families who suffered severe damage from the storm on June 2. Submitted photo

EAST CENTRAL — On July 2, several communities throughout the region suffered heavy damage from a storm, including Carrot River, Arborfield, Zenon Park and Aylsham.

“The biggest thing that’s pretty obvious when you come into the community is a lot of trees blown over, broken,” said Kevin Trew, Carrot River’s administrator. “There are trees that landed on vehicles and houses in town.”

Some facilities damaged by the storm within Carrot River include the Carrot River Jr. Sr. High School, which had its gymnasium roof blown off, as well as Pasquia Place.

Pasquia Place is a 18-unit assisted living facility located in the former Carrot River Hospital building.

“One thousand square feet of roof came off. There are parts where it’s just roofing material that came off, but there are parts where you can actually see daylight from the inside,” Trew said.

Staff quickly accessed the situation and evacuated residents out of the building.

“They were able to find places for them all to stay in the interim, and cleanup began.”

The full financial extent of the damage is not yet known as of July 6, but the town believes it will be a number of weeks before the facility can be livable again.

Trew said in the rural areas surrounding the town there have been noticeable crop damage.

“There are areas where the crops have been totally obliterated, but then there are areas where it doesn’t seem to be touched,” he said. “One of the damages in town was gardens and flowers. There is some huge damage to the plants themselves where they’re just stripped to a standing stem in many cases. Lots of gardens look like someone came out and cut all the leaves off them.”

The town is still accessing damages, but their current assessments indicate that with the exception of Pasquia Place, all municipal buildings and equipment are undamaged.

“All in all I think it was a very scary situation, and all in all I think we came through it decent and in decent shape. I know there are some isolated incidents where they didn’t come through it very well, but we haven’t heard of any injuries.”

Lisa LeBlanc, Zenon Park’s administrator, said that the bulk of damage to their community has been fallen trees, debris, with some – typically minor – damage to buildings.

“There are a few garbage cans where we don’t know where they are yet,” LeBlanc said, adding that while most of the building damage had been minor, that wasn’t the case for everyone in the community.

“I know there was a farmyard close to Zenon Park that apparently was quite damaged – the house. I don’t even know if they can live in it anymore.”

One issue the village faced from the storm was power loss and the resulting implications.

The storm knocked out power in the community for about 24 hours, resulting in the village renting a manual pump to lower pressure on their sewer lift station.

“We had to actually turn it off for a bit so people weren’t using too much water, and I think that was a bit of an inconvenience,” LeBlanc said.

“I think there was about half an inch or three quarters of an inch of rain in that short period of time; so it’s hard to engage when it’s coming that fast.”

As a response to the storm and its strain on the water system, the village is currently under a water boil advisory.

“One thing leads to another,” LeBlanc said.

“Nobody got hurt and that’s the most important thing.”