Homes still being repaired one year after damaging Barrie tornado

A set of EF-2 strength twisters hit Barrie on July 15, 2021, and a year later, residents are still working to restore their homes from the damage caused by the tornadoes.

The tornadoes left hundreds of homes damaged, including dozens completely uninhabitable, resulting in more than 2,200 insurance claims for damage to personal and commercial property.

No one was killed after the tornadoes hit, but 12 people were taken to hospital in Barrie, and more than 100 residents were displaced. Some homes have been completely restored, while others are still in the process, and a few more have yet to be repaired.

Barrie Mayor Jeff Lehman spoke to CityNews about what he remembers from that day.

“What stands out to me now is how a lot of people, they had that instinct to protect themselves … they ran to basements, pulled cars over, got somewhere low, and I think that saved lives,” Lehman said.

The Barrie mayor believes it’s the reason the tornado, which had a damage path of over five kilometres wide, didn’t kill anyone that day.

“[It’s] astonishing when you look back at the pictures of the damage, the condition that some of the homes were in the time of day.”

Barrie’s fire chief says the overall approach to tornado response is “similar” to responding to other emergencies.

“Our command systems, our structures are scalable … and we follow a lot of the same practices and rules, we just scale them based on the event,” said Chief Cory Mainprize.

“Instead of dealing with one family or two families. We were dealing with dozens, if not hundreds of families.”

Work to rebuild Barrie homes continues daily

He says one of the things emergency services have refined in the wake of the tornado is managing the incredible scale of the community support that came in, from donations to neighbours showing up and offering to help.

“We had so many people that wanted to help and so many people that were bringing donations, and that became a large logistical issue for us to manage to make sure things didn’t go to waste. They got where they needed to go,” said Mainprize.

“So the community support was amazing, but it creates challenges at the same time. So we adapted, we learned some new practices and how we would deal with that to manage those logistics as well.”

David Belitski lives on the hardest hit street, and one year later, he’s still finding debris in strange places.

“[We’re] just getting some normalcy for everybody on the street here, still a little work to do.”

Homes and vehicles were damaged in Barrie, Ontario, by an EF2 Tornado on July 15, 2021. CITYNEWS/Walter Korolewych

That work to restore is moving at different paces for different families. One home that is destroyed is now rebuilt. Others are in process, but four homes still haven’t seen any progress.

“There are a few that are still relatively untouched in terms of the repairs, and those are often insurance situations or sometimes a problem with the contracting arranged for the property,” said Lehman.

“I feel the frustration of those property owners.”

Amanda Barrowcliffe, whose home was damaged in the tornado, while some might think things are back to normal, that’s not the case.

“It’s taken a long time as you can see if you’ve gone through the subdivision,” he said.

Barrowcliffe said she’s very grateful to have found a contractor and have repairs underway, adding the local building industry has had a lot on its plate.

“The volume of work in this area alone resulted from the tornado, let alone the new builds or renovations. It’s been difficult,” said Barrowcliffe.

“I’m very grateful that I have fantastic companies willing to come out and give me some of their time to restore the house.”

Meanwhile, Eric Traves is a contractor and doing work on his stepdaughter’s home, one of the hardest hit. He said he feels fortunate he bought a lot of materials before supply chain issues started hampering efforts.

“The whole outside will be redone … the inside was completely gutted,” said Traves. “The one thing that was saved would have been the brickwork and the original framing.”

More radar training and stronger building codes have been highlighted as some of the critical issues that needed to be fixed in the tornado’s aftermath, according to the Head of Meteorology Services at Environment Canada.

With files from Meredith Bond of CityNews

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