The big blow

For years, John has been photographing rootballs -- the chunk of root and soil that rears up when a big tree falls over.  A Dec. 20 windstorm that lashed the south coast of B.C. provided many specimens for his camera. This one on Saltspring Island is the biggest to date. Photo by John Denniston. More available at  johndenniston.ca

Two toppling trees would have crashed into this house if they hadn't been held back by a third. There were many such near-misses as a result of the storm. Photo by John Denniston.

This is how the forested areas looked in hard-hit areas of the island. Photo by John Denniston.

Chainsaws were busy all over the island. Photo by John Denniston.

Just down the street from us, a tree had fallen onto the roof of a garage. Photo by John Denniston. 

“D’you have power?” the grocery store clerk asked a regular customer passing through her checkout in downtown Ganges on Saltspring Island this week. It was the day after New Year’s, but the customary festive greetings weren’t even being mouthed in the wake of what BC Hydro said was the most damaging windstorm it has ever dealt with.

The Dec. 20 storm, which hit Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands particularly hard, knocked out power to 756,000 B.C. customers with wind speeds of more than 100 km/h at times. There were over 400 millimetres of rain in some areas, which saturated the soil to the point that shallow-rooted trees such as Douglas firs and hemlocks toppled with abandon.

Arriving on Saltspring a week later, my partner John and I quickly discovered what that meant. Our usual route to Vesuvius was closed because hydro crews were still working on downed power lines. Along the roadsides, trees were snapped off in jagged tears, or uprooted altogether, their gigantic rootballs perpendicular to the sky. Trees swayed on power lines, balanced above houses, and sat where they had fallen onto decks and roofs and garages. Our neighbours in Vesuvius were reveling in heat and light after a week without electricity, but their phone lines were still down.

The disaster stories were still being told and retold. The people in the waterfront house who watched the storm boiling up over the ocean and suddenly realized they should get away from the windows. The neighbor whose sea search and rescue duties sent him to Maple Bay on Vancouver Island at the height of the storm, with wind gusts of 120 km/h creating mini water spouts on top of the boisterous ocean waves.  The neighbor who drove home in a hail of tree twigs and branches and acorns, and immediately took out his chainsaw and set about clearing the road of fallen trees. The people who went without electricity and water for 10 days. The greenhouse that survived two trees smacking down on each side of it, but leaving it intact. The trees that fell on cars, houses and garages just after people had left them -- for miraculously, there were no reports of deaths or even injuries on the island.

 Then there were little discoveries, like the fact that all new septic systems must have electric pumps instead of relying on good old gravity is a problem when the power fails.  The waste just – sits there. A resident who owns a high-powered generator helped out by bringing it around to his neighbours’ septic tanks.

Everywhere, there were stories of such generosity, as well as of appreciation. The islanders even staged a thank-you gathering for all the emergency crews they’d watched work day and night under terrible conditions to bring life back to normality.

John and I got off very lucky. There were no water leaks, broken windows or toppled chimneys at our place. For us, it was a matter of picking up debris and fallen branches, cutting the bigger ones into firewood, and hauling the rest to the compost pile. But we look at our neighbour’s 90-foot Douglas fir just across the fence, and wonder about next time.

John at work with his chainsaw on debris from the storm in our garden.

Such a tiny little pile compared to what fell down in the woods.

The debris from the storm finds a home on the compost heap at the top of the yard.