'Mother Nature is no joke': Kawacatoose resident reflects on 2010 tornado

Allanis Asapace remembers watching black clouds swell as they rolled in fast from the west, darkening the sky over her home on Kawacatoose First Nation. 

It was nine years ago. She and her sister had run outside after hearing a stranger holler, "There's a tornado." 

"We could see the debris from miles away flying around up in the air and then we spun around," Asapace said. "We panicked."

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Their parents took a quick look at the incoming storm before Asapace's dad ordered them to seek shelter in the basement. 

"My heart was racing like crazy," Asapace said. "I was trying to go downstairs as fast as I could without falling and getting hurt."

She said she wanted to cry, but tried to stay strong for her younger sister.

"We heard a big bang upstairs and that was the front door flying to the back of the house," she said. "It just went quiet right away after that and then everything was over — like it just happened in seconds." 

They emerged from the basement into pouring rain. She said the first thing they saw was that their neighbours' home had been "tipped right over." 

Asapace said the family stood nervously waiting to see if their uncle's children would emerge from a home that appeared to have been smashed into a million pieces. Asapace said it felt like a miracle when they appeared one by one. 

The F3 tornado that hit the Kawacatoose First Nation in 2010 left 85 people without a home, but no serious injuries were reported. F3 storms can cause severe damage, with winds around 250 to 300 kilometres an hour.

Asapace said it was heartbreaking to look through the smashed windows of her childhood home and see shingles and insulation strewn about. 

The fear from the storm lingered long after the winds subsided. 

"I feel like it was like a long time to finally feel back to normal," she said. 

Her parents were displaced and had to live in a camping trailer for about three years before their home was replaced, she said. 

Asapace said she wasn't open about how she felt afterward. She struggled whenever a storm came. 

"The first few years I felt like I was having like a panic attack," she said.

"Mother Nature is is no joke."

She's since done research and now feels prepared to take cover at home should another tornado strike.

She's also a mother to a young boy and said she wants to maintain a calm and reassuring pressence. 

When bad weather strikes she tells herself, "we're going to be okay. I know what to do if it really does happen, so we'll be safe."