Alberta tornado witness says twister hit homes leaving damage, gas ‘spewing’ and power lines down | CBC News

RCMP say 14 houses have been damaged, and five of those homes have been destroyed after a devastating tornado hit Mountain View County in central Alberta. 

On Saturday, a one- to two-kilometre-wide tornado swept through the region, RCMP said. Mountain View County includes the Carstairs, Alta., Didsbury and Olds communities. 

In an update Saturday night, RCMP said one woman was trapped in her basement as her home was destroyed above her. Carstairs Fire Department pulled her from the rubble and she suffered minor injuries. No other people have been reported injured, RCMP said. 

RCMP said 25 cows and 20 chickens died, and one horse was put down. 

Carstairs resident Cheryl Beck told CBC she witnessed damaged property about one kilometre north of that town. 

Eye witness says tornado was a ‘monster’ 

Storm chaser Aaron Jayjack was in the area when the tornado damaged homes approximately eight to nine kilometres southeast of Didsbury. 

“It hit a few buildings, just barely scraped some buildings. I saw a little bit of a little bit of damage, a little bit of debris,” he said. “And then as I decided to get a little closer to it right as I did, that is when it really strengthened up and it hit a couple of houses, damaged them pretty significantly.” 

Jayjack said he stopped his chase to check the homes to see if anyone was hurt, but all he could hear was gas “spewing” from the home and he saw that the power lines were down. 

“I decided it wasn’t safe for me to get any closer to the home and right that moment. I saw that there were emergency responders coming down the road to me. So I decided to let them do their job and continue doing my main job, which is tracking the storm and got back on the tornado,” he said. 

WATCH | Tornado in central Alberta seen from the highway: 

Tornado spotted by family in central Alberta

Deborah Bradbury-Dawe, who shared this video with CBC News, said her family was driving from Calgary to Edmonton when they had to stop due to the tornado near Carstairs, Alta.

“It was just a monster, insane tornado tracking along the Prairie here in Alberta.” 

Lisa Arrowsmith, a former Canadian Press reporter, was driving south on Highway 2 toward Calgary with her husband on Saturday afternoon when she said the sky got dark and they could see a very large funnel cloud to their right.

“The thing that came to my mind is we either have to turn around and drive as fast as we can the other way, or we have to try to outrun this,” Arrowsmith said, although she said turning around on the divided highway would have been next to impossible due to barriers.

“You make a split-second decision, and we just thought, well, we’d better just floor it and hope for the best.”

She said many people had pulled over to shoot video of the twister. But she kept the pedal down and after some hail hit the car, they knew they were finally in the clear, she said.

“It was very frightening to think maybe you were going to get caught on the highway with nowhere to hide and nowhere to seek shelter,” she said.

Environment and Climate Change Canada had issued a tornado warning at 1:50 p.m. local time, noting meteorologists were tracking a severe thunderstorm in Mountain View County that was producing a tornado near Didsbury which prompted an Alberta Emergency Alert. That warning ended about an hour later.