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EXAMINER
THE PETERBOROUGH
LEE
JONES
SALES REPRESENTATIVE
United Realty Inc.
743-4444
The Local ExpertsMcWILLIAMS
MOVING & STORAGE LTD.
799 Erskine Ave. • 741-4749
SERVICE LIKE THIS DOESN’T COME FROM A BIG BOX!
Open 7 days a week
The Kingsway
Lansdowne St. W.
Lansdowne
Place
Mall
ErskineAve.
TheParkway
HighSt
FLOORZ
Farmboy
Frankie
Shanna
Justin
Kirk
Darragh “Too”
Sarah Deeth, Examiner
Yesterday’s windstorm blew over a large tree onto this van parked at a property along Parkhill Road East near Television Road.
Two struck by lightningBy DON PEAT
Examiner Staff Writer
A city golfer is lucky to be alive after get-
ting zapped by lightning yesterday after-
noon.
Dale Roth, 39, was just trying to do his
friend a favour by parking his golf cart after
their game was rained out. He parked the
cart and started walking back to the pro
shop at Liftlock Golf Club on Ashburnham
Drive, he said.
The contractor had managed to golf nine
holes before the weather became too rough.
Roth was just trying to walk the 50 yards
back to the clubhouse when lightning struck.
“It hit the umbrella, came down my arm,
all I saw was blue light and then my knees
just cut out,” said Roth.
“This must be what it feels like to get hit
by a Taser.”
Roth said the pro shop staff came out to
help him off the ground and see if he needed
an ambulance.
He walked away but said he still feels a
slight tingling in his arm.
Roth said he feels pretty lucky that he sur-
vived.
“My friends want me to buy a lottery tick-
et,” Roth joked.
Meanwhile, a 54-year-old woman was also
struck by lightning while hanging up laun-
dry on her clothesline in Norwood, said
Douro-Dummer Fire Chief Mike Keough.
Keough said the woman was taken to hos-
pital after yesterday’s incident on County
Road 40, south of Webster Road, that hap-
pened about 3:45 p.m. He said he didn’t
know the extent of her injuries. Keough
would not tell the public the woman’s name.
— with files from Jeanne Pengelly
Possible tornado in Norwood
By SARAH DEETH, DON PEAT
and JEANNE PENGELLY
Examiner Staff Writers
Things were more than a little
topsy-turvy the day after Mary
Wright moved into her house on
Old Norwood Road.
A storm swept through yesterday
afternoon dropping hail the size of
golf balls, uprooting trees and
downing power lines.
“All of a sudden it got really dark,
really windy and started hailing,”
Wright said from her home at 2317
Old Norwood Rd. “It was raining so
hard you couldn’t see the cows
across the road.”
Environment Canada reported
flash storms across the province
yesterday.
The first of two severe storms hit
Peterborough and the Kawarthas
about 3:45 p.m., leaving drivers
stymied.
Some drivers along Ashburnham
Road simply pulled over and wait-
ed after watching others fishtail
through intersections a foot deep in
rain.
“The neighbours all think it was
a tornado,” Wright said.
In the city, residents were won-
dering the same thing.
“Did a tornado touch down?” one
woman yelled from her car as she
slowed to survey the damage on
Parkhill Road near Television
Road.
Large branches lay on the ground
and a tent was hanging from power
lines near the intersection.
Marion Humphries shook her
head and looked to her neighbour’s
yard, where a full-sized tree had
toppled over.
“It just came up so quick,” she
said.
Parkhill Road resident Linda
Vizza surveyed the branches scat-
tered across the road.
“This was just wild,” she said.
“Branches were just flying every-
where.”
Most of the damage happened in
an hour, she added.
David Phillips, Environment
Canada senior climatologist, said
there are signs the first storm was
a tornado, but it’s impossible to
know until experts see the damage.
“You don’t often hear of rotation
in the cloud when it’s not a torna-
do,” Phillips said.
On average 15 tornadoes touch
down in Ontario annually, he
added.
Peterborough County OPP and
fire crews blocked off Old Norwood
Road from Television Road to
Burnham Line, directing traffic in
other directions, while emergency
crews worked to move a tree that
had pulled down a major feeder
line.
Hydro One reported 7,200 county
customers without power by late
afternoon, accounting for more
than three-quarters of Hydro One’s
storm-related power outages across
the province yesterday.
Power was restored by 8:45 p.m.
to most of those in the Peterbor-
ough area.
Storms rip through area causing flooding, power outages
Twister, severe thunderstorm
or microblast — weather officials
are unsure what to call it, but the
storms that ripped through the
Peterborough area yesterday
dropped hail the size of golf balls,
uprooted trees and downed power
lines.
While Environment Canada
experts will wait to see damages
before confirming the storm was a
tornado, a senior climatologist,
David Phillips said it makes little
difference. All can be equally dev-
astating, and all are considered
wind-related by insurance
adjusters.
“People think there’s a status
symbol associated with a torna-
do,” he said. “They think ‘my God,
what do you mean my house was
wrecked by a microblast?’”
Tornadoes, while unpredictable,
occur during unsettled hot humid
weather, Phillips said. Ontario
experiences about 15 of them
every year, most between 3 and 5
p.m., when heat and humidity
have built up.
Examining the scene of a torna-
do is like recreating a crime
scene, Phillips added.
“It’s almost like an autopsy,” he
said. “You want to look at all sorts
of things, like the prankishness of
the tornado, the size of the track
— a few metres to a kilometre —
and the length of it. You want to
analyze the debris field, take pho-
tographs, do interviews.”
Tornadoes usually leave a her-
ringbone pattern of wreckage,
said Phillips. A microblast, on the
other hand, would leave a
straighter line of damage.
Both are reasonably rare, he
added.
“You get 10 severe thunder-
storms and you get one tornado
spawned out of it.”
— Jeanne Pengelly
Twister or not, weather
was devastating
(See: House...Page A3)
Parkes
goes
after
DBIA
By DON PEAT
Examiner Staff Writer
Downtown development might be
back in the limelight just in time
for November’s municipal election.
A motion introduced by mayoral
candidate and Otonabee Ward
Coun. Garry Herring asked city
staff to prepare a report on the sta-
tus of the Downtown Business
Improvement Area (DBIA).
The motion was defeated at last
night’s city coun-
cil meeting.
Herring was
the only one to
support the
motion and many
councillors spoke
against it.
The issue was
related to a pre-
sentation by Joel
Parkes — a
council candidate
in the upcoming
municipal elec-
tion.
Parkes tried to
speak at last
week’s committee
of the whole
meeting but was
shut down by a
procedural
motion.
In last night’s
presentation, he
proposed creating a downtown
development department and elim-
inating the DBIA.
Parkes said he had spoken to
downtown business owners who
are unhappy with the organization.
Parkes at first said he had con-
ducted a survey of all the DBIA
member businesses and had
received zero positive feedback
about the group.
Councillors questioned his survey
methodology.
Parkes then clarified he had
received feedback from about 33 per
cent of the downtown businesses.
Herring calls
for report on
agency, motion
defeated
Garry Herring
Joel Parkes
(See: Motion...Page A3)