I feel the same way every time there’s a tornado watch or warning or whatever else they call the possibility of severe weather.
And I felt it Thursday afternoon just before the storm hit south-Barrie, tearing roofs off houses, toppling trees, flipping vehicles and leaving a trail of debris as far as the eye could see.
I feel this way because I remember the damage caused by Barrie’s tornado on May 31, 1985.
The next day, June 1, was my first full day in the city.
Highway 400 sailed right through the city and the view looked like a war zone, following an air strike. Barrie Raceway was devastated, as was its immediate neighbourhood, where I would later live with my family. One photo shows our townhouse, the walls and roof ripped off where my daughter’s bedroom would be one day.
And where I sit right now, writing this column.
I was in a small town outside London, Ontario and on the evening of May 31, the sky got pink there and it was very still. But the weather blew over in that part of southern Ontario.
My stuff was all packed for the move to Barrie, so I didn’t watch TV or turn on the radio Friday night. Next morning I was up early for the three-hour drive to Barrie, armed with a stack of music cassettes for my driving soundtrack.
But I always checked the news, and flipped on the radio a few hours into my drive. That’s when I heard about Barrie’s tornado, and wondered just what I was driving into.
It didn’t take long to get a visual as I approached the city.
The devastation was both a shock and sobering. More than 600 homes were badly damaged, a third left uninhabitable, while a dozen factories were completely demolished, leaving at least 400 people out of work.
About 35 boats disappeared from Brentwood Marina, along with cement anchors embedded in Kempenfelt Bay.
I was to stay at my brother’s home, in the east end, until I found my own place, and had no idea what its fate had been.
When I found his apartment, in a low-rise building, all seemed well and there were no signs of high winds turning debris into missiles.
The door was open and the phone ringing when I entered my brother’s apartment the Saturday morning after Barrie’s tornado.
My mother was on the phone when I picked up, calling to see if my brother was OK. She’d been calling since the night before, but the lines were down because of the storm.
My brother walked in a few minutes later, a little amused by any concern about his safety. He’d been in a downtown bar Friday evening when the twister hit further south in Barrie, and had escaped unscathed.
Too many others did not, however.
At least nine tornadoes tore through Ontario, killing 12 people, on May 31, 1985. The tornado which struck Barrie just before 5 p.m. was 600 metres wide and carried wind speeds of more than 400 kilometres an hour, levelling trees, tossing cars and indiscriminately destroying buildings of all types.
Eight people were killed in Barrie by the F4 tornado (how they classified twisters then), another 155 injured.
Every year, for 30 years and beyond, the tornado is marked and people remember what it was like. They tell and hear stories about what it was like to face the real power of nature, and the consequences.
I wasn’t there May 31, but saw the devastation the next day.
There’s a memorial to the tornado victims at Shear Park, near the corner of Innisfil Street and Baldwin Lane, close to where so much of the devastation took place. The city keeps the flowers nice, the ferns trimmed and the grass cut there.
Every year there’s a small bundle of flowers, less than a dozen, usually in plastic wrapping, placed at the foot of the memorial on May 31.
Someone remembering a loved one who perished in the tornado, most likely.
The flowers stay there a remarkably long time, even as they wilt or the sun turns them crisp.
People must put them back when they blow away or a squirrel briefly mistakes them for food. I know I do.
They were still there, in mid-July, last evening when I checked.
Like many who were here in 1985, they have not forgotten what it feels like when a severe storm roars through - whether it brings thunder, lightning and rain, or another tornado.
