Trees tumble in high winds

By Dan Hilborn
Published Feb. 8, 2006


Victor Groot was fast asleep early Saturday morning when heavy winds knocked the big old cherry tree off its roots in his front yard and sent it crashing to the ground just one metre from his home.

"It woke me up at 4 a.m.," the Cariboo Heights resident said. "I peeked outside to see what all the noise was about and could see the tree laying quietly on the grass. So I went back to sleep."

When Groot woke up for real several hours later, he thanked his lucky stars that the tree fell parallel to the house instead of straight towards it.

"If it had come towards the house, it would have probably hit the roof line and caused all kinds of problems," he said. "Maybe it would have poked through the window."

The shade tree, which used to support Groot's hammock and keep his home cool in the summer, will be replaced, but the homeowner admits he'll make a little adjustment to its location.

"I will put the next tree a little further away from the house," Groot said.

Another homeowner at the corner of Cliff Avenue and Napier Street was equally lucky when a tree fell between his home and fence during the heavy winds that were reported to surpass 90 km per hour near the Tsawwassen ferry terminal.

Brent Robertson, foreman of the urban forestry division of the Burnaby parks department, said there were several instances of trees striking car and roofs around the city, but there was no truly serious damage.

"I think we got off fairly lightly, compared to other municipalities," Robertson said. "We're compiling the reports right now, but we're still getting calls. People often don't seem to notice the damage until two or three days afterwards."

B.C. Hydro reports that Burnaby also escaped the worst of the power outages, with the only incident in the city being an eight- hour outage affecting four customers in the 6800 block of Antrim Avenue during the daytime. That power outage was not even caused by the wind but by work being done on the power lines, said a notice on the B.C. Hydro website.

Officials in the city engineering department also reported few incidents as a result of the high winds. "We didn't have a lot of problems," said Lorne Graham, the superintendent of roads.