A group of neighours was left cleaning up the damage resulting from a windstorm July 7 which ripped apart a tree and branches plummeted on three cars in a north Okotoks community.
John Varndell was watching television with his family before heading off to bed last Thursday when a loud noise cracked through Lock Crescent.
“At about 11 p.m. we were watching TV and I heard what I thought was thunder,” he said.
All of a sudden there was a commotion outside and people were knocking at his door.
It wasn’t thunder, it was the sound of a limb from a large poplar tree on his property falling across three cars belonging to two of his neighbours.
Varndell said the company that came out to remove the tree limb the next morning estimated it weighed about 3,000 pounds.
He said he was happy to have insurance and understanding neighbours
Jim Drinnan now has two trucks to get repaired, one of which was new with less than 3,000 kilometres.
“I hadn’t even had it to the car wash yet,” he said.
However, Drinnan understands accidents like this happen.
Despite the one incident, the Town of Okotoks’ urban forester Gordon White said the town survived Thursday’s windstorm with relatively little damage.
The Town’s crews were kept busy on Friday morning picking up small branches blown off trees around Okotoks.
White said the largest branch they found was a four-inch limb broken off a tree in Sheep River Park.
“As of right now, I only know of one four-inch failure and other than that it looks like there’s certainly branches down but nothing serious,” he said on July 8.
Town personnel had just finished cleaning up from a windstorm that blew through the foothills on July 3.
“We had one large poplar failure that was about an eight inch stem on Centre Avenue,” he said. “Other than that we had some four inch failures and about three days of branch pick up.”
White said the Town’s regular pruning program has helped to prevent major storm damage to trees on public areas in the community.
“We try to prune out branches that look hazardous and have poor branch attachments and stuff like that,” he said.
