Image taken July 23, 2007
Originally uploaded by ‘Scratch’
It’s the 20th anniversary of Black Friday. July 31, 1987. 27 people lost their lives in Edmonton when an F3-F4 Tornado passed through the eastern edge of the city.
Luckily - the storm chose a path through a less populated rural and industrial area. The loss of life no doubt minimized by the path, but no less terrifying, or deadly to those in it’s wake.
We were at Southgate mall. Picking up some summer clothing, and some new clothes for School just 4 weeks away. We came out of the shopping centre to find a man with his skull split wide open from a baseball sized hailstone.
In the stormy skies that remained we cut a path toward home - assuming the worst had been done, when we hit a thick patch of rain and traffic backed up as far as the eye could see. We were only behind the storm by two or three minutes… As we crawled down sherwood park freeway toward Sherwood Park - ambulances, police and fire crews drove up the median and in the ditches ahead of us.
When we reached the area the devastation was total and visceral. Cars, buildings, dumpsters, people - all alike - tossed around like trash in the wind. It would take days to survey the damage. Months to clean up and repair. I’ll never however, forget.
Somewhere - in all my photographs - I still have an image of the Mammatus cloud at the tail end of that storm. To this day - I’m inspired to chase, to photograph and to document these severe storms - to capture their fury and beauty.
http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-70-1713-11760/disasters_tragedies/tornadoes/clip8
I remember it well….we were so worried about Wralffie’s safety but the little guy was fast asleep in the family room in the basement. (Don’t remember the guy getting his head cut by the hailstone however (knowing about Hailstone……)
You don’t remember that! South entrance of the bay, we were heading to the car - and the dude was coming in holding his scalp… there were two or three people with him.
I remember we made a B-Line for the car when we saw the weather coming out of that place. I also remember being re-routed from the Sherwood park freeway to hell and back before we were able to get into Sherwood park.
Oh yeah! And the RAIN! The Dodge 600 had water just shy of the doors in the underground parking area…
Nope, guess I was too concerned about getting the “H” out of there and everyone home safely. I do remember the rain an d the fact that the water in the parkade was halfway up the wheel well however.
PS: Also the fact that we had less than 1/4 a tank of gas and all of the pumps were down across Edmonton…..arrived home on fumes.
I was living on the East Coast when the tornado hit. My wife lived with her family in the Evergreen trailer park.Their home was destroyed. Luckily she was not home at the time. A couple of her childhood friends were not so fortunate and they are no longer with us. It is 20 years later and she still gets nervous in stormy weather