Waldheim, Sask. sees significant damage from tornado

Residents in Waldheim, Sask. were among the hardest hit after a weekend full of severe weather in Sask. Hallee Mandryk reports.

Fallen trees, damaged buildings and debris are scattered across the town of Waldheim. It’s the aftermath of a major bout of severe weather from last week.

Waldheim was one of several Saskatchewan communities to experience extreme weather in recent days. Late Friday afternoon, a tornado touched down in the area.

“We got the notification ... and we started looking north towards the skies and we saw the dark skies coming in and I’m sure everybody was doing the same. And then pretty much everybody took cover,” Waldheim Mayor John Bollinger told CTV News.

The storm caused considerable damage across town.

Many homes saw damage to roofs and siding, in addition to debris scattered across several yards.

The Waldheim Regional Park Golf Course has been closed since the storm due to significant damage to the grounds, which includes several completely uprooted and toppled trees.

“It has been stressful, especially for those people that have been hit a little bit harder than others. But, I’ve been really proud of the community,” Bollinger said.

“They’ve stepped up and within an hour you could hear the chainsaws starting up all over the all over town, they were wherever the issues were.

“And the town employees were in with the big machinery dragging trees off the driveways and the road where the trees had landed and everybody just kind of pitched in and took part.”

No injuries were reported, but many homes and yards are in need of significant repairs. Desiree Muise has lived in the community for over a decade, and her family’s property saw considerable damage thanks to the storm.

“Pretty shocking and sad. I think the biggest thing was just seeing the devastation here, but just knowing that our family was ok was like the biggest thing for sure,” Muise said.

She says her family has seen some big storms over the years, but Friday’s weather was something new.

“This is definitely the worst storm. We had a pretty bad one last summer that came through, and it did some damage to a couple of our trees in the back. But this by far is something we’ve never experienced, and we hope we never experience that again,” Muise said.

While Saskatchewan is known to experience significant storms during the summer months, Dave Sills, the director of the Northern Tornadoes Project shared that what Waldheim experienced was out of the ordinary.

“I was watching that [in] real time, really worried about the community because there was a really big supercell, with strong rotation as it was moving across that community,” he said.

“There’s always the chance that it’s that supercell with that strong rotation is going to generate a violent tornado, an EF4, or maybe even an EF5 and just wipe out a community,” Sills said.

The town is now in the process of cleaning up and contacting insurance providers. Muise shared that while the experience has been difficult, the community has remained strong.

“Our community is amazing here,” adding that people instantly began reaching out.

“We have had messages, we had phone calls, we had people just stopping by just to make sure everything was ok.”

Muise said she and her family are choosing to remain optimistic during the challenging time.

She shared that many trees planted by her husband and his family decades ago were wrecked by the storm, but there will soon be an opportunity for the family to get together and plant trees once again.

“There [were] two rows of trees here, so probably about 20 trees they had planted,” she explained.

“These trees were over 40 years old and now we’ll get another chance to ... come out and replant them as a family again for us. So it’s sad, but we can replant them.”