By Stephanie Froese

Plough wind aftermath

Jul 20, 2011 | 6:33 AM

Two waves of storms swept over the Lakeland on Monday night and Tuesday morning causing an insurance nightmare for some and a great story for others.

Near Christopher Lake, the metal roof of Bruce Anonson’s lakeside home was ripped right off during the night.

He said he is already dealing with the mangled wreck that now lies across his driveway, while his neighbor’s vehicle and, pieces of which, are found a half kilometer down the road.

“The first thing we’ve got to do is try to get it tarped over before it starts raining again, so we don’t get any more water damage inside and talk to the insurance people and wait for an adjuster to call and then we just work from there, I guess,” Anonson said.

While his scenario is an extreme case, many property owners will also be assessing damages and calling their “insurance people” over the next few days.

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Volunteers, work crews and neighbors are helping each other out by clearing trees off the roads and cars and in some cases buildings. Crews were also scrambling to restore power that was knocked out for most of the area.

The Murray Point Campground at Emma Lake was also hit hard and crews, including volunteers, are taking trees off of roofs and cars.

Further north, in the Waskesiu area, plough wind damage has left a lot to cleanup.

Maverick Allison works the Grey Owl Center in Waskesiu. Allison and the center’s owner Bentley Crozier watched the first storm front bring in hail as big as a softball.

“It smashed up windows, dented a lot of cars, did quite a bit of damage, the grocery store is missing a few panes of glass, trees were knocked over onto power lines,” Allison said.

Crozier said the craziest thing about this storm is that the hail kept falling for about an hour. Most hail storms only last a few minutes. He said one customer who ducked inside from the storm saw the hail damaging her car. She lost her front and rear windows.

“Actually the tow truck driver that sits right there, he’s told me he’s got close to 50 cars to pick up in the area,” Crozier said.

On one street in Waskesiu was hit particularly badly. On one side a tree fell on top of a cabin. On the other side a cabin owner had quite a wakeup call as he was trying to fall asleep when a tree was uprooted by the wind and split the cabin in two.

“The tree fell within about four feet of my feet. I just got right up and looked around. It was very scary,” he said.

“Everyone is OK but my nephew wouldn’t sleep in his bed after that.”

Staff at Waskesiu watched the storm roll in from the beach, said Pat Dunn, external relations manager for Elk Island and Prince Albert National Parks.

“I don’t think any of us anticipated how big that storm would get,” she said.
Staff started to clean up as soon as the storm ended.

“Trees were down, so staff were out right after the storm moving trees and making sure people were OK. They even went out on the lake and brought some people in that got into a little bit of trouble out there.” Dunn said.

As for injuries, Dunn said they are certainly lucky that no one was seriously hurt.

In the aftermath of the storm, swimming at the main beach at the Waskesiu townsite has been shut down.

Dunn said depending on currents it will likely be closed for two to three days before test samples come back clean.

In the meantime vacationers in the area can swim at any of the other beaches in the area.

For more photos on the storm and damage that hit the Lakelands and Prince Albert National Park see the photo gallery.

sfroese@panow.com