Jul 07
31
20th Anniversary
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
