A mother near Breton has recounted what she experienced when a tornado touched down near her adult daughter’s home Thursday afternoon in an interview with CTV News.
The tornado formed out of a massive storm that passed through central Alberta Thursday – and it came very close to the homes of a mother Teresa Pinyon and her adult daughter Ashley Polischuk, who live about a mile apart, in a rural area northwest of Breton.
Pinyon said she and her sister were watching the storm come in, and later had to go out in it.
“We had to go and turn the livestock out and that’s when the rain started really hard, so we just kind of stood in the barn,” Pinyon said. “I was videoing out the back door, watching the clouds, and that’s facing south, facing Ashley’s home. That’s when I started seeing funnel clouds.
“The first one just basically kind of shot out of the clouds and then it went back up. Then there was a few more small ones that bounced around all over the place.”
Pinyon said she saw a funnel cloud above her daughter’s home at about 5:30 p.m., and said that’s when she started to fear for the safety of her daughter and grandchildren.
“I was terrified for my kids and my grandkids. I can’t really explain it. I felt helpless.”
Meanwhile, Pinyon’s sister got in touch with Polischuk on the phone, and said she put her kids in the bathtub.
Pinyon said she saw one funnel cloud go through her daughter’s front pasture, but it touched down west of her home.
“[That’s] where all the damage has been done.
“You can see a path where it went through when it touched down and then it went through and it took out trees,” Pinyon said. She said the twister broke off large trees where it hit.
She said the destruction came close to a neighbour’s home, and emergency crews were deployed to the area to remove trees from power lines.
Environment Canada confirmed Thursday that a tornado touched down about five kilometres northwest of Breton.
No injuries have been reported.
With files from CTV Calgary
