Chatham, Ont. storm which downed dozens of trees classified as EF0 downburst
CTV
Nick Kamarlingos and his wife Nancy had decided to move from the front room of their house to the kitchen just moments before a tree crushed the front of their Gregory Drive home.
Nick Kamarlingos and his wife Nancy had decided to move from the front room of their house to the kitchen just moments before a tree crushed the front of their Gregory Drive home.
“We stepped into the kitchen and all we heard big bang on the roof when it came down,” said Kamarlingos, as he watched a tree service crew cut apart the tree.
He added, “We had just put that porch on last week, and finished shingling the roof. But we're very lucky that it was the porch which actually took the brunt of the hit to save the house.”
A few blocks away, residents on Selkirk Street were some of the 300 still without power more than 36 hours after the storm, which came through late in the day on Aug. 24.
“It has been so chaotic,” said Steve Melnyk, a Selkirk Street resident who lives steps away from where a massive tree fell, closing the road for more than two days.
“We heard a thump looked outside, and I thought it [the tree] hit my van. There were sparks everywhere and it was just a mess. We were lucky enough to have cars in the driveway but the neighbours’ cars are all on the road because they don’t have driveways, and all three got totalled,” he explained.
