Many municipalities hit by outages
Aug 21, 2009 - 11:49 AM
By Crystal Crimi and Jillian Follert
DURHAM -- A fast moving wall of thunderstorms left thousands of Durham residents in the dark Thursday evening.
The storm, with a confirmed tornado in Woodbridge, and possible tornados in Maple and Newmarket, left at least 25,000 Veridian customers without power, most of them in Durham Region, said George Armstrong, the company's manager of regulatory affairs.
A strong line of thunderstorms ran north and south, some of which were capable of creating tornados, said Geoff Coulson, Environment Canada's warning preparedness meteorologist.
"We do see it a couple times a season, a very well defined line of thunderstorms," Mr. Coulson said, adding that usually they're not in such populated areas.
Veridian provides power to Ajax, Pickering, Clarington, Uxbridge and Port Perry. Lights went out at about 6:45 p.m. with power restored by 10:30 p.m. Outages occurred as a result of a loss of supply from the main, province-wide transmission grid, Mr. Armstrong said.
Power was also out in large portions of Whitby and Oshawa.
The storm also caused some minor damage in Clarington, including three downed trees reported, two of which were looked after by Hydro One; and a minor washout near Newcastle, said Jennifer Stycuk, the municipality's communications co-ordinator.
"But nothing more than a spring storm would have brought, is what I was told," she said in reference to the washout.
As of Friday morning, there were 10 locations in east Clarington, three in Bowmanville and two in Burketon that required cleanup, she added.
"As time goes on, we're likely going to be issuing storm damage bulletins," Mr. Coulson said, adding some of which will likely be about Durham.
Given the damage reports they've received so far in some of the areas hit, they're lucky more people weren't hurt, Mr. Coulson added.
There was one fatality reported in the town of Durham, Grey County, Mr. Coulson said. From reports he has received, it looks like a youth took shelter in a shed in a conservation area, and the shed was destroyed in the storm, killing the youth, Mr. Coulson said. He added the police were to hold a press conference about it today.
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