‘A utility’s worst nightmare’: Severe storm cuts power to thousands in Sarnia area

Bluewater Power crews worked through the night after a severe storm, which spawned an Environment Canada tornado warning, moved through the Sarnia area late Thursday afternoon and left half of the utility’s customers without electricity, the utility says.

Some 17,000 customers were without power at the peak Thursday and nearly 1,000 were still without power Friday morning, said Bluewater Power chief executive Janice McMichael-Dennis.

That number was down to about 750 by mid-afternoon.

“Yesterday was a utility’s worst nightmare,” she said. “The sheer impact of this storm was stunning, was absolutely stunning in some cases.”

While some areas, like Petrolia, were spared, “Alvinston looks like something out of a bad dream,” McMichael-Dennis said. “Select areas in Sarnia and Point Edward were hard hit, too.”

As of Friday morning, Bluewater Power’s crews were working on outages in 11 areas, she said. The utility’s outage map indicated outages in 10 areas mid-afternoon Friday.

“It’s the worst one that I can remember,” McMichael-Dennis said. “I believe it was worse than what held the previous record, which was Hurricane Sandy in 2012.”

Bluewater Power put out a call for help and Entegrus, another Southwestern Ontario utility, sent nine linepersons to help, she said.

“We’re going to work diligently at, it but these last (outages) are the hard ones,” McMichael-Dennis said. “There’s a big group of people who won’t be back until (Saturday).”

The largest outage Friday morning was about 400 customers in Alvinston, and the others were “scattered in Sarnia and Point Edward,” she said.

That included the Guthrie Drive, Rosedale and Holland avenues area, which was “an absolute mess,” after being hit “by some torturous winds and just pole after pole snapped and trees down. . . . There’s a lot of damage still out there.”

There was also significant damage on Hagle Street and St. Clair Street in Point Edward was also hard hit, McMichael-Dennis said.

Having 1,000 customers still without power Friday morning was “devastating,” she said. “Bluewater Power does not normally have long power outages.”

Hydro One’s outage map showed electricity outages Friday morning across areas of Lambton County the utility serves.

Environment Canada issued a tornado warning between about 4 and 5 pm Thursday and severe thunderstorm watches continued into the early evening.

David Sills, executive director of the London-based Northern Tornadoes Project, said he visited Alvinston after the storm Thursday and the damage appeared to be from a downburst.

“In a downburst, you’ve got rain-cooled air that’s dropping out of the thunderstorm” and “spreading out at the ground,” he said. “The worst of the downburst hit the town and they got a lot of tree damage.”

Sills said the project was sorting through a large number of storm damage reports to determine which to visit with a survey team.

“At the moment, there are two areas. . . warranting an investigation,” include a barn downed in the Petrolia area, he said. “There happened to be radar rotation over the area at the time, so we’ll be looking at that.”

The project will be looking at at the Dealtown area, near Lake Erie, where some structural damage was reported, he said.

“It was a big line of storms right from Michigan and through southern Ontario, into Ohio and New York state” that resulted in reports of wind damage, Sills said.

There were also reports of large hail.

“We knew going into this that large hail was going to be a possibility and there were reports of baseball-, and maybe even softball-sized hail, that fell in Southwestern Ontario,” Sills said. “We do not usually get hail that large in southern Ontario.”

Power outages left many Sarnia intersections without working traffic lights and there were downed trees and limbs on some streets.

Helen Smith, who has lived on Nelson Street for 58 years, was home when a tree in the front yard came down on the house during the storm.

Her son-in-law, Maurice Trepanier said Smith doesn’t hear well, but “she felt the house shake. She looked out the front door and saw the tree leaning against her house.”

Arrangements were already in place to have the tree removed and electricity restored to the house, and a contactor had been contacted about repairing the roof, he said.

“She’ll stay with us for a few days,” he said.

The city said via Twitter Thursday evening it was “responding to a high volume of downed trees in the wake of this afternoon’s storm. Forestry crews have been deployed, prioritizing clearing of primary, then secondary, roads tonight to ensure safe travel across the community.”

The city said Friday its forestry crews will be at work during the coming week removing large trees and limbs from boulevards.

Fire Chief Bryan Van Gaver said the city will also be adding brush pickups to help residents with the cleanup.

That will be Saturday and Sunday of this week in hard-hit areas and citywide during the weekend of July 29 and 30. Residents are asked to bundle brush and place it on the curb. The city’s compost site will also be open the next two Sundays so residents can drop off brush and yard waste.

More information can be found on the city’s website, sarnia.ca.

“It came in fast and furious,” Van Gaver said. “Basically, by the time clouds rolled out, we were dealing with a cleanup issue.”

The city received “a lot of 911 calls” about safety concerns but there weren’t many reports of damage to buildings or other city infrastructure, Van Gaver said.

“We responded to numerous calls last night – several at the same time. A lot of it was down-wire concerns, smoking (utility) poles” and a few houses in a small area reporting smoking fuse panels possibly linked to a lightning strike, he said.

Sarnia police urged residents via social media to “proceed with caution throughout the city,” watch for downed power lines and trees, and to treat all intersections without power as four-way stops.

“Emergency services and Bluewater Power are attending to multiple issues all over the city,” Police Chief Derek Davis said via Twitter. “Everyone’s patience is appreciated as storm damage is addressed.”

The Sarnia Golf and Curling Club said about a dozen trees came down on the course during the storm.

“The course is asking everyone to stay off the grounds due to the danger of hanging branches potentially falling,” the club said in a social media post.

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