Hiking trails off limits in Toronto following severe ice storm damage

Globalnews.ca
June 3, 2014
By Laura Zilke

Staff at the Kortright centre for Conservation in Vaughan, just north of Toronto, say about three kilometres of hiking trails remain closed because of debris and fallen trees from a severe ice storm last December.

“The volume of the damage that the ice storm has produced is overwhelming,” said Adrian O’Driscoll, Kortright’s education supervisor. “We just don’t have the manpower to tackle all of it.”

The sound of chainsaws echo through the trees while O’Driscoll speaks - a staffer is cutting down a severely damaged Manitoba Maple just off one of the park’s main trails.

O’Driscoll asks the staffer how much time he is spending on ice storm clean up - “about half” he says. The other half is spent trying to keep up with daily maintenance.

Estimates for the cost of the clean up aren’t even close yet, says O’Driscoll, but they are spending a lot of money on what he calls “specialized contractors.”

The team is hiring arborists with “special lifts and long-armed chainsaws”, to get to out of the way limbs, according to O’Driscoll.

In the city of Vaughan itself, 12 sports fields remain chained off from the public.

City staff closed the soccer and baseball fields after the spring thaw, “we have had delays before in the spring, but generally just because of the heavy rain,” says Jason Inwood,Vaughan’s parks operations manager.

This time, Inwood blames the damage on the ice cover that sat for months on the field following the ice storm. “The water on the actual surface caused significant damage to the turf,” says Inwood, “once it froze, it stayed there until spring came.”

Some fields suffered as much as 75 per cent loss of the grass according to Inwood. Initially, 16 fields were closed to the public. On average the city of Vaughan says they are open by May 12, but the dozen that remain closed won’t reopen until at least the end of June.

The parks were re-seeded over the course of the last several weeks.

“You can see seed germinate within the first 21 days”, says Inwood as he looks across the expansive, eerily empty pitch, “but you do need a few more weeks after that for the seed to establish - for the roots to establish.”

If they don’t establish before aggressive play begins, they’ll be back where they started says Inwood - bare, hard, surfaced fields; ripe for injury - “safety is paramount.”

So despite the disappointment of local athletes, Inwood says they’ll stay closed.

In the City of Toronto, Parks and Forestry staff estimate the cost of the ice storm to be close to $50 million.

Forestry operations Manager with the Parks Forestry recreation division, Dean Hart says that number is only an estimate, because damage is still being assessed, since trees are just now back fully in leaf.

“With a little bit of wind or a little bit of rain, some of those hidden hazards were branched weakened by the storm - some of those branches are now coming down,” said Hart.

The city no longer has any trails or parks closed because of the damage, but staff warn residents to call 3-1-1 should they notice any limbs or branches on pathways. Hart says making sure those areas are kept clear is a priority, so “a lot of our routine maintenance of trees has been put on hold”.

He says this clean up is still the bigger priority.

Same goes for staff at Kortright. Each day could bring a new closure, says O’Driscoll, “we’re going to have to wait and see.”