Podcast: 25 years later, reflections on the devastating Pine Lake tornado

As encapsulated in a 2020 article by former rdnewsNOW news director Troy Gillard:

The tornado, categorized as an F3 with wind speeds up to 300 km/h and ranging from 800 metres to 1.5 kilometres wide, carved a 15-kilometre path of destruction.

The storm started developing around 4 p.m. along the Rocky Mountain foothills, and at 6:18 p.m., Environment Canada issued a severe thunderstorm warning. It was at 7 p.m. when the twister touched down five kilometres west of Green Acres campground and smashed its way in a straight line for 15 km, straight through the campground.

A new interview rdnewsNOW and The Everything Red Deer Podcast did with long-time central Alberta media personality Jim Claggett sheds a fresh reflective light on what happened that day, a quarter of a century later.

“We were out on our deck, my wife and I, and we were looking towards the south and could see how dark it was. I thought there was a pretty good storm coming, and we knew a bunch of guys that I played slo-pitch with were out there in a tournament, in that area. I thought, ‘Oh boy, they’re going to get rained on really good,'” says Claggett, who was working as a journalist in Red Deer at the time.

(Red Deer Archives)

Ten years after the tornado, Claggett interviewed the first paramedic and ambulance driver to arrive on scene at Green Acres.

“He stopped his ambulance and got on the microphone and said, ‘We’re going to need way more ambulances.’ That’s all he said, then went down and started working,” Claggett recalls, likening it, in principle, to a journalist’s work when tough news stories such as this occur.

“You see the situation, you assess, and then you do what you’re supposed to do, which is get information out. Then it registers with you later that people lost their lives, trailers, equipment and boats. It’s frightening how powerful Mother Nature can be when she wants.”

Claggett was working as a news director in Wetaskiwin on July 31, 1987 when the Black Friday tornado killed 27 people in Edmonton.

Pine Lake brought him back to that experience, which he drew upon in reporting on it, including when he visited the campsite a few days after.

“There are so many situations you don’t expect to come across your desk, and when they do, you just handle it,” he shares.

“You have to vacate your personal feelings and focus on the job at hand, which is to get your information, and get it out as quickly and as accurately as possible.”

Claggett’s story, along with many others, define the importance of heeding weather advisories, such as thunderstorm watches, from Environment and Climate Change Canada seriously.

As Harvey Kelts, who knows Claggett, told Troy Gillard in the aforementioned 2020 article, he and friends who were playing in a ball tournament the day of the tornado were surprised at how quickly the clouds were moving closer.

“As it got closer,we folded up our lawn chairs and thought we’d better get back to where we camped, because it looked like it was going to be a pretty bad one,” Kelts said. “By the time we had got there, literally within three minutes, the wind had picked up and it started to hail. We had no idea what it was and just rode it out.”

(story continues below)

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Fifteen minutes later, the sun was out, and it was ‘Play ball!’

But the realization of what happened came a half hour later when sirens began to blare.

A team in the tournament made up of EMTs soon dropped what they were doing to go and help.

Green Acres, which had been devastated, was just a few kilometres south of their location. They were indeed the lucky ones.

An estimated 1,000 people in the area were displaced.

But people were there to help, before and after then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien visited the site, famously noting that if the tornado had happened during the night, it could’ve been even worse.

“It was unbelievable. Thirty-foot motorhomes were on their side and trailers thrown all over the place. I can distinctly remember walking one of the sites and there was a mat there with shoes on it and no trailer. It was hard to believe that it literally picked up the trailer but didn’t move the shoes that were on the mat,” Kelts added.

One hundred Canadian soldiers, 20 search and rescue teams, six navy divers, and dive teams from the Calgary Fire Department were involved in the response and recovery operations.

(Story continues below) Compilation of archival news footage following the Pine Lake tornado on July 14, 2000. Compiled by Troy Gillard in 2020. (Courtesy Red Deer Archives)

There’s a story of a camper which ended up on the other side of the lake.

And there’s another about a baby girl thrown high into the air, only to be brought down, and survive with hardly a scratch.

In all, an estimated $3.4 million (2000 figures) in property damages were caused by the tornado, but the most tragic and long-lasting of all were the lives cut far too short. They were:

Clifford Stegman, 50, from Red Deer
Merrill Booth, 63, Calgary
Charles Boutin, 72, Calgary
Lisa Gourley, 30, Calgary
Thomas Ian Prior, 68, Calgary
Margaret Provan, 66, Calgary
Kenneth Prudhomme, 50, Calgary
Irving Simmonds, 74, Edmonton
Margot Warner, 31, Rumsey
Oren Wangsness, 51, Leduc
Doris Broberg, 63, Strathmore
and Lucas Holtom, 2, from Ontario

rdnewsNOW reached out to the Green Acres campground, which is still owned by the same family, but they respectfully declined an interview at this time.

by Josh Hall | @Vancan19

Podcast: 25 years later, reflections on the devastating Pine Lake tornado

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