'All hands on deck' as city cleans up in aftermath of storm

City of Winnipeg crews are working to clear away dozens of "hazardous" trees in the aftermath of a storm which blew through Winnipeg on Sunday.

The storm appears to have cut a swath of destruction from St. Laurent in the Interlake on a southwest angle through West Hawk Lake and into Ontario.

A full complement of city crews are out on Winnipeg streets dealing with the cleanup today, and it's "all hands on deck" attending to phone calls, city spokeswoman Tammy Melesko said this morning.

Most of the 300 calls the City of Winnipeg has received through 311 about the storm were regarding fallen trees, including "hazardous" trees blocking roads or on hydro lines.

As of this morning, there were 133 reports of "hazardous" fallen trees, 116 reports of trees that split and could be dangerous, 30 reports of fallen trees, and 52 calls for brush pick-up.

Crews are dealing with the worst first, and working with Manitoba Hydro to ensure staff are safe during the clean-up, Melesko said in an email statement.

Fort Garry was one of the hardest hit areas of the city, and crews are expected to work on storm recovery efforts over the next few weeks.

The large trees which pose the biggest threat are being dealt with first. The city has also received calls about traffic signal outages.

Kingston  Crescent and Kingston Row also emerged this morning as one of the worst hit areas

David Rand surveyed a tree limb that fell and buckled the roof of his house Monday and sighed.

"It could have been a lot worse," he said on the phone as he looked around and described the scene of devastation that effectively trapped people on Kingston Crescent.

"We have a big ash in the the front yard and it came down on the house. We didn’t have the car or the boat in the driveway which is where it came down. So it could have been lot worse," Rand said.

The Rands were driving back from Kenora when the storm hit, forcing them to pull over at West Hawk Lake. They got a call from a neighbour to say Kingston Row and Kingston Crescent had been hard hit.

The Rands knew driving home last night that their roof was hit. One window is broken in the second-storey home and the roof is buckled. But other homes got it far worse.

"You can’t drive in right now and people can’t leave. There’s a tree down right over a hydro line," Rand said. "There are a lot of uprooted trees across the street and power lines down. A few poles are snapped and it looks like another could snap. In the park there are three big ash trees down. And all up and down the street, trees are down. One went through a roof."

The scene street overnight was lit with red siren lights, from fire trucks called to the emergency.

"No one got hurt," Rand said, sounding relieved.

Still the extent and ferocity of the storm seemed to have nearly overwhelmed the city and services, like Hydro, were overwhelmed with a deluge of calls, even by morning.

Rand said by the time his buddy got through to his supervisor at Manitoba Hydro Sunday night it was 10 p.m. and man was not aware of the extent of the damage.

Shaun Ursell had  just settled down to dinner at his parents on the shady tree-lined Carpathia Road in River Heights when the sky turned black and wicked winds sent a funnel of destruction down the street in front of him. There was driving rain and pea-sized hail but it was the wind that dealt the hardest blows Sunday.

Ursell said he saw a gust of wind come up and scrambled to get his shoes on to move his car to a safer location. Before he was able to get out the door, a tree split about halfway up the trunk next to his car. The entire top half of the tree toppled, crushing the top of his 2007 Nissan Versa sedan.

"It was the best car I’ve owned and it only had 50,000 kilometres on it," Ursell said.

He’s calling Autopac today. City crews had yet to lift the tree off his hatchback  this morning.

Around town, neighbourhoods pitched in people used winches on trucks and brute strength to clear paths for traffic.

 Storm damage hit the hardest everywhere there are big old trees in southern Manitoba.

That pretty much means thousands of people from Dauphin to Piney were affected by cells of storms that lashed out with straight winds and driving rain. They knocked out power and left people stranded behind downed trees that spanned city streets and left cottage country grappling with a scene of devastation every bit as bad as last summer's floods.

There’s no full survey yet on on the damage.

Manitoba Hydro crews worked overnight and the utility has called in every extra man and woman it can find to work around the clock, one weary spokesman said.

Manitoba Hydro spokesman Scott Powell said it could take a day or two to assess all the damage.

Outside the city, areas in the Twin Beaches, straddled by the flood hit rural municipality of St. Laurent were among the hardest hit. And 1,000 people in the St. Laurent area remained without power Monday.

In other parts of Manitoba, some people lost electricity briefly like parts of Dauphin and areas of Winnipeg , others were out all night like isolated pockets and entire streets in the city.

Some were out this morning, like parts of River Heights and Windsor Park.

Still more will see their power cut off briefly Monday as repairs get done.

The hits were not unlike the hopscotch pattern of damage typically seen with tornados only the storm wasn’t a tornado.

"Obviously we want to get everybody back up as soon as possible but its difficulty when you’re in areas with a lot of trees," Powell said.

Manitoba Hydro is still taking reports of damage as people return home from vacation or go to work this morning.

"This is very fluid and things are changing by the minute," Hydro's  Powell said.

Some areas are back up. Some are not and with more reports of outages expected to come in throughout Monday, utility needs people to be its eyes on the ground.

"People should be on the look-out for downed power lines and if they see one, consider it live. Stay away from it and keep other people away. And call us right away," Powell said.

 Here’s a partial list of areas where power went down in the city and the rest of Manitoba:

• 1. 700 customers in east River Heights, an area bounded by Cambridge Street to the east, LindsayStreet  to the west, Grant Avenue to the South and Fleet Avenue to the North.

• 2. The entire town of Pinawa from 7:45 p.m. to 11:15 p.m.

• 244 customers in Windsor Park, the Symington Yards and parts of St. Vital from Fermor Avenue to Glen Lawn Collegiate from 7:15 p.m. to shortly after 8 p.m.

• 2,600 customers in Fort Garry and Linden Woods from 7:20 p.m. to 8 p.m.

• Falcon Lake. So far 500 people are back on the grid.

• Various Winnipeg city streets. Kingston Row and Kingston Crescent are examples.

• 720 customers in Fort Rouge-Crescentwood, in an area bounded by Pembina Highway to the east, Stafford Street to the west, Dudley Avenue to the south and Jessie Avenue to the north. Hydro cut power to some homes in this area at 5 a.m. and most houses were back on by 6:45 a.m.

• Parts of Dauphin from early afternoon until about 7 p.m.

• Parts of St. Boniface.

• Gimli, the Winnipeg Beaches were hit hard.

• Interlake areas, including Warren, Teulon, Twin Beaches, St. Laurent.

• 315 customers north of Springfield Road

• 50 customers in Piney, in southeastern Manitoba