Toronto Tornado Account

I recently had the unpleasant experience of finding myself in the vicinity of a tornado on August 20,  basically throwing me into the scenarios I write about on this site. The several tornados that went through the Vaughn and Durham County area of Toronto wreaked havoc on many homes and shut down power to many more.

Driving along on the 401 with two of my children, I did not have the radio on, which would have been a helpful tool at that time. We were heading through Toronto and I was watching the skies on that humid August day, seeing how dark they were becoming and thinking only of rain. First mistake. Hot, humid and muggy are perfect days for tornado formation. I definitely should have checked the radio. Then the rain came. I should call it a car wash actually, because I have never been in a rain storm that was so dense, heavy, hard and pummeling down and sideways on the vehicle. Every automobile slowed to a crawl on the 401 as we could not see ahead except for the emergency lights that people had started on their cars. I was in a rental, and had not thought about looking for those lights. Now I was in the down pour of my life, and could only try to peer through the water to make sure I was staying in my lane and hoping everyone else was staying in their’s. I could not pull over to the side because I was in the fourth lane of a six lane highway, so to pull over would be catastrophic as I could not see around me. It was just that dense. Eventually the rain eased up just a tiny bit – enough that I could see a sign for Milton coming up, and I was able to move over to the side to enter that exit. Oh, the sight of a McDonalds was never so welcome, not because I was hungry, but because I wanted to get out of that rain and see something besides water in front of my eyes.

Once seated, we heard a man talking to his wife about the tornado. Only then did I realize what was going on, and turned on the radio once the skies cleared enough to drive a bit more safely. Watching the news that night, we saw the devastation that had pummeled neighborhoods and took the life of one eleven year old boy. Did people do what they needed to? Well, it appears there was little to no warning about a tornado, and maybe I’ll have to correct myself later, but I have not read that yet. Second, a lot of people in buildings such as their office building, ran to the window to watch a funnel instead of gravitating to the bathrooms or walls away from the exterior windows and walls. Some people headed to the basement, but far too many were there for the view, and it must have been mesmerizing because they couldn’t peel themselves away from the window to get some proper shelter.

Mega millions of dollars in property damaged has been estimated, and families have lost their treasured possessions in the blink of an eye. For me, I’m just glad my treasured possessions were safely alive and with me as we unsuspectingly drove through areas where tornadoes were possibly going to touch down.

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