By paNOW

White City and Balgonie residents pull together after storm

Aug 12, 2014 | 1:15 AM

Residents in communities east of Regina are continuing to clean up after a powerful storm system moved through Friday night.

On Monday morning in Balgonie, trees that had littered the streets over the weekend were mostly gone. They are now in neat little piles on many front lawns. Those branches and leaves are waiting to be collected by Al’s Tree Service.

“It’s pretty devastating for trees that’s for sure,” said Bruce Cameron, who works with the company.

The trees are then put into The Intimidator — that’s the name the company has given its massive wood chipper — which grinds everything up and spits it out into the back of a truck.

“I think our truck probably holds about two or three, four tonnes of chips and we’ve done probably eight loads so far.”

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Cameron explained how that translates into hundreds of trees for his three-man crew. They’re just getting started.

“We’ll be here for another couple days anyways and then White City is just down the road,” he said.

As the tree company went up and down the streets of Balgonie, Don Gottselig was in his yard cleaning up debris. He had a tree fall on his roof. That may be gone now but the damage is still evident. Gottselig strangely welcomed the thunderstorm. He was planning on removing some of the trees on his property anyway.

“I just got free help getting a lot of them out,” he joked.

Gottselig was also in the process of remodeling his house. He’s glad that insurance money will now come his way.

Over in White City Sonya Roteliuk stood on the street across from her home speaking with neighbours. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits after such a nasty storm.

“The day after was a little bit of devastation and shock for what came through here but everybody’s pretty good and thankful that nobody was hurt,” she insisted.

Chainsaws could still be heard cutting down any trees that remained on residents’ properties. Partially toppled trees were also reduced to stumps.

Bobcats helped push the debris into piles, which also decorated the streets in Emerald Park. There Cory Toth was snipping what remained of his damaged fence around his home.

“This was one of the reasons why we moved out here, was because of the nice, mature landscaping and trees,” he revealed. “It’ll never be the same.”

Toth joins many others in staying positive. He realizes that his clean-up is only just beginning and that it could take weeks to finish. Despite the destruction, everyone in this neighbourhood is in the same situation and people are working together to help restore the area back to its former condition. 

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