Local power crews traveled to Essex County Thursday to help restore power and fix storm damaged infrastructure, exactly one week after Sarnia-Lambton was hit by a severe thunderstorm.
Trees toppled, branches snapped and hydro lines came down in communities near the Lake Erie shoreline when a storm that prompted a tornado warning rolled through Wednesday night.
The Northern Tornadoes Project is investigating reports of downbursts in Kingsville, Harrow, Blenheim, and Pelee Island.
Bluewater Power CEO Janice McMichael-Dennis said they were happy to return the favour after receiving similar assistance to fix hydro outages here.
"We have sent six of our finest linemen to Harrow, Ontario, which is part of the ELK Energy Group," said McMichael-Dennis. "They had some significant weather damage there last evening."
McMichael-Dennis said staff wanted to go even after dealing with outages in Sarnia overnight.
"Our guys left bright and early," she said. "We got everything cleaned up overnight and then you say 'who wants to help?' and again, of course, all the hands go up. So, we sent our vacuum excavation truck and another big rig down there to help our friends just outside of Windsor."
"We have finally completed cleanup from last week's storm," McMichael-Dennis said. "That was days... days... in the making. Of course you do a lot of things where you just 'make-safe'. Make sure there's a clear passage, make sure everybody's ok and then you come back. But, we've done all those circle backs now and the team did an outstanding job. That one is behind us, that one is for the books, done safely and efficiently."
Western University's Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP) confirmed an EF0 tornado touched down in Petrolia on July 20, and four microbursts were spawned across the region.
