Calgary, Alberta — A tornado of historic proportions touched down in central Alberta over the weekend—not that anyone in the collision industry would have noticed, as it turns out that just about every repair shop in the area says they were unaffected.
Tornado researchers classified Saturday’s twister as an EF4—meaning it reached a maximum wind speed of 275 km/h and is only the second tornado of that severity to hit Canada in recorded history.
Collision Repair reached out to repair centres in the Didsbury-Carstairs area to get a feel for the type of damage being seen by residents, however, every shop contacted insisted that they were unaffected by the weather event.
“There may be a couple [auto claims],” a rep from Countryside Auto Body in Didsbury said over the phone Wednesday. “But it mostly hit farmland and a rural area.”
Save for a small number of residences in the region’s many rural pockets, the vast majority of locals certainly cashed in on some good luck by avoiding the brunt of what could have been a truly devastating tornado.
According to researchers from the University of Western Ontario’s Northern Tornadoes Project, who were on site in Alberta on the weekend, 12 residences were hit by the tornado: three were destroyed, four were left uninhabitable, and a further five were damaged.
One minor injury was recorded, however, the researchers claim it was just a small cut suffered by a first responder.
The last EF4 tornado to touch down in Canada was in 2018, when one person was killed in Alonsa, Man.
