Tornado threat 'adrenaline rush' for Ponoka Stampede emergency chief
'I don't think there was really a time I could breathe a sigh of relief until the skies cleared'
As storm clouds began to swirl over the town of Ponoka Thursday evening, Ted Dillon says he watched tensely from the local stampede ground.
"It's up to me to decide if there has to be an evacuation," said Dillon, emergency management coordinator for the Ponoka Stampede.
"When you've got to go from zero to 100 per cent in a minute or a few seconds, it's a bit of an adrenaline rush."
About 10,000 people travel to Ponoka each year for the town's annual stampede, one of the biggest in Alberta.
Late Thursday afternoon, fairground rides ground to a halt as a major storm moved in. Hundreds took shelter under the rodeo bleachers, but Dillon said he wasn't ready to call for an evacuation, even as dark clouds churned into a funnel north of the grounds.
"You've got to be careful when you try to evacuate 10,000 people," he said. "It's going to be like a herd of animals running free, so you want to be absolutely sure ... for their own safety."
Sister just sent this to me from Ponoka. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/maskwacis?src=hash">#maskwacis</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/yegwx?src=hash">#yegwx</a> <a href="https://t.co/2SoE57Gbo2">pic.twitter.com/2SoE57Gbo2</a>
—@picklejinxThe high winds damaged at least three homes in one neighbourhood, carpeting the street with tree branches and construction material.
"I can't even really process it right now," said Shelly Dedio, who watched the funnel cloud from south Ponoka.
Her backyard now lies in shambles. Wind shattered the windows of her sun room and ripped out a portion of her fence, flinging it across the yard.
Dedio said she also found items that didn't belong to her in the debris, such as a cat carrier and trampoline legs. She found the rest of that trampoline wedged in the treetops of her neighbour's backyard.
"I would not have wanted to have been home," she said. "You just don't expect it, as much as you listen to the warnings."
Even as the storm toppled trees and tore shingles from roofs in north Ponoka, Dillon said the stampede crowd stayed dry. Some even complained about the shutting down of the rides, he said.
"It went by relatively fast," he said. "The worst part was a lot of chatter by the people panicking."
In the back of his mind was the deadly Pine Lake tornado that killed 12 people and injured 140 at a campsite in July, 2000. He was among the first responders to the disaster while working as Ponoka's fire chief.
"You're always concerned," he said. "I don't think there was really a time I could breathe a sigh of relief until the skies cleared."
