‘Mad’ windstorm topples dozens of mature trees in Hamilton

It will take weeks to figure out the final death tally for city trees, but Friday’s wind storm felled 15 trees in Woodland Cemetery alone

Thepec.com
May 7, 2018
Matthew Van Dongen

The city is still working around the clock to deal with dozens of mature trees toppled by Friday's "mad" windstorm along streets, in parks and cemeteries.

On Friday, high winds ripped through the city, felling trees, branches and hydro wires that often ended up across roadways. A man in his fifties was electrocuted by downed wires in central Hamilton that evening.

The windstorm has so far spurred 450-plus calls for help dealing with either fallen city-owned trees or downed limbs blocking public streets, said forestry superintendent Steve Robinson.

Those calls include "dozens" of mature trees pulled up from the roots or even snapped in half. A final tally of dead or damaged trees is still weeks away, he suggested.

"It was just mad, the amount of force coming through there on Friday," he said, pointing to reports of wind gusts peaking at 126 km/h. "We're seeing massive old maples coming up at the roots. We had a 70-foot high healthy Norway spruce that had its trunk snap like a matchstick at the base. Just unreal."

Woodland Cemetery -- a city-owned site that is actually in Burlington -- lost 15 different mature trees to wind damage. Those toppled trees, in turn, crushed or knocked over at least seven stone grave monuments, said parks head Kara Bunn.

"We're still clearing the debris and hoping the damage to the stones is not too bad," she said, adding crews are scrambling to make the popular cemetery and green space safe ahead of Mother's Day weekend. The downed trees included evergreens, maple and oak.

Large evergreen trees also crashed down in Gage Park, while massive limbs were ripped down from some of the oldest remaining shade trees in Victoria Park. The latter park lost many of its oldest trees to the invasive emerald ash borer in 2015.

Robinson said evergreens were the most likely victims of a full collapse -- in part because their needle-filled boughs turned them into "wind traps." He suggested the damage could have been "much worse" had the windstorm hit after leaves returned to the city's deciduous urban canopy.

He said the number of damaged or dead trees will likely climb over the next few weeks as city forestry and parks workers finish with safety-related calls in high-traffic areas and start evaluating less-travelled trails.

The Hamilton Conservation Authority also warned residents Monday some of its trails will be "impassable" due to wind damage for several days.

The biggest job for city crews over the weekend involved the daylong removal of a century-old silver maple from a home on Melrose Avenue South. Photos quickly circulated on Twitter Friday of the monster maple leaning on the two-storey home, roots erupting through the lawn and nearby street.

A crew of eight people used two different boom cranes to carefully remove the massive tree, which was about a metre-and-a-half wide at the base and estimated to weigh about 27,200 kilograms. A single 2.5-metre length of the trunk required its own disposal truck, Robinson said.

"That was our biggest job," Robinson said. "But we've had seven different crews working every day across the city, just focused on making things safe."

High winds on two separate occasions last month had already famously felled a towering Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket and a real estate billboard. The latter sign fell on two men, sending one to hospital in serious condition.

The Friday windstorm also took down a solar-powered, city-owned trail light standard, and pulled down construction hoarding at the new Lister annex downtown.

Coun. Jason Farr has said he is meeting with city staff this month to talk about whether safety inspections are needed for large signs and construction hoarding.

Wild winds knocked out power to thousands

Paul Koehler and his wife were eating lunch in their Aldershot home when the lights came back on Monday afternoon.

The retirees had gone without electricity for almost 72 hours at their Kingsway Drive house after Friday's wind storm knocked down hydro lines, toppled trees and littered debris across the region.

"I'm 69 years old and it's the worst experience I've ever had with respect to power outages," he said.

After reaching out to a number of people on Twitter, Koehler said Burlington Mayor Rock Goldring personally followed up to make sure Burlington Power restored service to his home.

In the Hamilton area, Hydro One crews were still working to get power back to about 50 homes in Dundas as well as a handful of others on the west Mountain, in Ancaster and in Flamborough Monday afternoon.

The majority of customers were expected to be up and running again by Monday evening, said Hydro One spokesperson Tiziana Baccega Rosa.

At the peak of the storm, more than 567,000 customers were without power in Hydro One's service area.

By Monday morning, Alectra Utilities had restored service to the 13,657 Hamilton homes that lost power during the storm, said spokesperson Rachel Bertone.