When Cameron Hockey is asked to describe the devastation of an onion that hit the Samuel de Champlain provincial park in the northeast of Ontario on the night of June 21, it is almost lost by words.
“The closest thing that could correlate this with some people could have a mental image would be like a clear forest operation,” he said while standing in front of a building camouflaged by the great pine on top.
The hockey is manager of the Algonquin area of Ontario Parks. During the past week, he has been coordinating the collaboration efforts to eliminate the fallen trees from the park’s roads and evaluate the damage.
“The number one priority at this time is to provide that safe access so that people come to the site and obtain their personal goods,” he said.
The Downburst are powerful winds that descend from a storm. Unlike a tornado, which produces a wind funnel from scratch, an onion produces strong winds that move down a storm.
The hockey guesses that the storm destroyed at least 100 trailers and vehicles when it knocked down trees as bowling pins.
He said it is a miracle that nobody was killed.
Significant damage
But some campers, such as Colin Murphy of Eganville, Ontario, suffered serious injuries. Murphy said his femur was destroyed in four places after a tree cut his family’s trailer and fell on him.
Hockey said another campist almost lost his arm after he was caught under a tree for hours. The emergency workers, who toured the brush for hours to reach the campers, could release it and then the surgeons saved his arm.
The damage to the park is so significant that hockey said it is impossible to say exactly when it can reopen.
An image of drones taken by researchers from the Northern Tornados Project (NTP) at the Western University of London shows thousands of trees in the Jingwakoki camp of the Park were flattened.
“At this time there is so much material that we really need to eliminate many debris just to completely understand all the impacts that this has had on the park,” Hockey said.
He said that includes critical infrastructure, such as high voltage electric lines, water systems and buildings, such as public bathrooms.
Non -profit trapped in the storm
Bill Steer is a general manager of the Canadian Ecology Center, which is in the park.
Steer pointed out several cabins that destroyed the roofs for fallen trees.
If the storm had happened a week later, more than 100 students would have been in the center of the summer camps.
“That would be a completely different story,” he said.
Steer said the center must close for at least three months to allow repairs.
“As a non -profit organization, as an environmental education center, we trust operations, so we do not obtain any subsidy,” he said.
“The next real challenge is to be financial.”
Steer said the park could take even more to reopen.
“The park has to go through an initial evaluation, and then I think, you know, it is anticipated that an important forest operation will appear,” he said.
“And they will begin to remove those cabins and then we can do our evaluation.”
