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'Instinct saved people’s lives,' Barrie mayor says of tornado

'When you think about it, somewhere in your head is the knowledge that when stuff starts flying by the window, you run downstairs,' says Barrie Mayor Jeff Lehman
BarrieTornado-July16-DayAfter-14
In this file photo from July 16, 2021, Barrie Mayor Jeff Lehman surveys the damage on Sun King Crescent a day after an EF-2 tornado ripped through the neighbourhood.

Severe weather has helped give city residents something essential to survive the storms which roar through with increasing frequency.

Instinct.

Barrie Mayor Jeff Lehman points to the tornado that touched down in the city’s southeast a year ago. He was in the Prince William Way area right after the storm and kept hearing the same story.

“The people who were in the area, when they saw or heard the tornado or got the warning in one way or another, their response, their immediate reaction, was to go to the basement,” he told BarrieToday. “When you think about it, somewhere in your head is the knowledge that when stuff starts flying by the window, you run downstairs.

“That’s what you do and that instinct saved people’s lives,” Lehman said. “When I asked them what happened here, what did you do, time and again that’s what I heard. ‘I was in the living room, the windows blew in, we ran down to the basement. My phone went off, I ran down to the basement. The next minute my second floor was gone.’” 

The July 15, 2021 EF-2 tornado hit just after 2:30 p.m., with maximum wind speeds reaching 210 kilometres per hour  damaging hundreds of homes and some small businesses in the Mapleview Drive East/Prince William Way area. Its damage track was about five kilometres long and 100 metres wide.

The storm injured 10 people, who were taken to hospital but later released. The tornado compromised the structural integrity of many homes, as some lost their roofs. It resulted in 71 unsafe house orders and seven demolition permits issued, city officials have said. The damage to affected homes was about $100 million.

But most importantly, no lives were lost.

“There’s a really amazing thing that people did, I believe, instinctively (go to their basement), that probably was one of the major reasons that nobody died,” said Lehman, 47. “And nobody was even seriously hurt.”

How do people develop such instincts? History and experience, in part.

On May 31, 1985, at least nine tornadoes tore through Ontario, killing 12 people. The tornado which struck Barrie just before 5 p.m. was 600 metres wide and carried wind speeds of more than 400 km/h, levelling trees, tossing cars and indiscriminatingly destroying buildings of all types.

Eight people were killed in Barrie by the F4 tornado, which is how twisters were classified then, and another 155 injured.

Last year’s tornado, in retrospect, doesn’t compare to 1985’s  but neither does the response.

“When you think again about 1985, we had radio, we had TV and if one of those was on and they broadcast a warning, I don’t remember it,” said Lehman, then about 10 years old and living in the Allandale area. “No fault to the radio stations or TV stations, the weather service didn’t have that capability and I think they were forecasting severe thunderstorms, but people didn’t change what they did back then.

“My mother said afterwards we had angels on our shoulders. … It was just a great way of saying that we had a whole lot of luck,” he said.

Lehman said people are much more alert to severe weather now and they need to be  given Barrie sits in the northeast end of what’s called Tornado Alley in Ontario.

The Barrie mayor says he believes social media and the internet have had a positive impact on educating people about severe weather and tornadoes. They can follow weather on their cellphones from a variety of sources.

“All of those sources of information provide more real time weather info than we’ve ever had,” Lehman said. “And I think the instinct to look at your phone more when there’s a severe weather incident is also out there now. I know I do. 

“I think that instinct comes from prior experience, but it also comes in part that the message is getting drilled into you. I think that’s more than just having been through it once. We all get more information, so I did hear that from people too (a year ago). ‘I heard it was going to be a bad weather day, we were watching for it a bit more and when things got really hairy that’s what we did (went to the basement)’.”

Climate change, of course, has caused more severe weather and its impact is visible on more than stormy days.

Just last week the city flagged the completion of the $24.4-million Kidd’s Creek culvert replacement project near Dunlop Street West, infrastructure designed to withstand that 100-year storm and resulting flooding.

“We don’t know what storms are coming, but this will mitigate the impact,” said Nathanael Couperus, engineering project manager, of the new culvert.

And severe weather isn’t just thunderstorms and tornadoes in spring, summer and fall.

“We had a serious amount of rainfall on a number of occasions this winter, and a couple of winters ago, and the real danger on the stormwater side is the ground’s frozen and none of it goes into the ground and has to run until it finds a home,”Lehman said. “That’s when your stormwater system is worth its weight in gold.”

So these survival instincts are now honed year-round in communities like Barrie.

“Whatever it is in that moment we all think about when a disaster hits, that’s a sudden disaster, we all hope that we would react well, in the sense of doing the thing that would help keep ourselves and our loved ones safe in that moment, whether it’s a fire or car crash or a natural disaster,” Lehman said. “In your life you hopefully don’t face those moments, but when we do… that’s when instinct kicks in. Because much as you hope you have a little bit of time to think, it’s often impossible to because you’re panicked by what you’re facing, and so you do what instinct tells you.”

Aside from developing such instinct, Barrie residents have looked into other measures to keep themselves safe during storms.

Coun. Natalie Harris has championed hurricane straps or clips, which connect and strengthen wood-framed roofs and houses. The most common ones are made of galvanized steel or stainless steel and they are designed to help protect structures from severe weather. 

Harris, who rode out the 2021 tornado in a house which lost its roof, helped convince city council to lobby the province to change the Ontario Building Code, in the future, to make hurricane clips mandatory.

“One of the sad tragedies of 1985 was some people didn’t have basements and lived in wood-frame houses that were blown away. They didn’t stand a chance,” Lehman said. “In this (2021) case, the neighbourhood that was hit was mostly brick homes, mostly with basements and that’s where instinctively people went.”

He said hurricane straps or clips are a low-cost way of solving one of the larger dangers in a storm, losing a roof.

But there’s no absolute safeguard during a tornado. 

“You can survive an F2 (tornado) if the house is properly built, if it’s a brick home, if all the bells and whistles are on it, but you’re going to have some damage,” Lehman said. “Unfortunately with an F4, even an extremely well-built home can take a lot of damage from a direct hit. You can’t build a home to withstand an F4 tornado and ever be able to afford it.”

But as the evidence from a year ago in south Barrie shows, there’s little substitute for the right instincts when severe weather strikes.


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Bob Bruton

About the Author: Bob Bruton

Bob Bruton is a full-time BarrieToday reporter who covers politics and city hall.
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