It spent more than an hour on the ground - cutting through and around the east side of Edmonton, but it etched in the minds of thousands an image of fear. They're images that still remain, a quarter century later.

Friday, July 31, 1987 was supposed to be the start of a mid-summer long weekend, but the fury unleashed by nature drastically changed thousands of lives.

A muggy, hot day spawned an intense storm, that eventually lead to the most intense tornado to touch down in Alberta's history.

"It was like a freight train coming closer and closer, louder and louder, until you couldn't hear anything anymore," Donna Friesen said in the aftermath of that day. "It was just screaming."

The twister touched down southeast of the city, in Beaumont, and by 3 p.m. had struck Mill Woods, before cutting a swath through the Strathcona Industrial Park - narrowly missing Refinery Row.

Clareview was next, before it arrived at Evergreen Mobile Home Park - the tornado's last stand, and the greatest loss of life.

Of the 27 lives abruptly ended that day, 15 were lost in that community - Tyler Chrisp was nearly one of them.
"[I was] two months old when it happened," Chrisp said.

"I wish I could remember it though, that's all."
Chrisp's family lived in the mobile home park at the time, as the tornado leveled a quarter of the neighbourhood - he was torn from his mother's arms.

He was thrown more than 300 metres to be found in a pile of rubble by a neighbour - eight hours later.
His prognosis from emergency crews on the scene wasn't good.

"She fought with the paramedics to keep me alive, but they said I was already dead," Chrisp said. "They said ‘We can't do anything,' but she fought and fought and they took me."[They] revived me."

Despite his revival, he suffered critical injuries to his brain and spinal cord that day - leaving physical scars he will bear for the rest of his life.

"You wonder about them now," Dist. Chief Pat Martin said. "How they're making out 25 years later."
On that day, Martin had been a firefighter for seven years, and after the tornado struck was sent to one of the hardest hit areas in the industrial park.

Martin and others on the scene only had a backhoe and their own hands to assist them as they worked to move the rubble - with slim chances of finding any survivors.

"It was actually calm out, and that's what was so eerie," Martin said. "Because we're looking around at this devastation - I've never been in a war torn city, you see it on the news, but it could have been a sight from Beirut or Afghanistan."

For the thousands affected by the tornado and it's aftermath, according to Chrisp, July 31 is a day not only marked by themselves - but by Mother Nature herself.

"There's a storm every year on the 31st," Chrisp said. "It just depends how bad it gets."

With files from Erin Isfeld