Tornado destroys couple’s home in Rossburn

Brian Brown grabbed his wife, Bernadine, and pulled her to the floor with him as a tornado demolished part of their brick farmhouse south of Rossburn on Sunday night.

Bernadine had been putting clothes in a dryer in the northeast corner of the house when her husband noticed a large tree fall outside a window at about 8 p.m.

“I just yelled at her to get away from the windows, and I grabbed her and threw her on the floor,” Brian said from the couple’s property Monday.

The tornado ripped the roof off the century-old house and tore apart the second floor, snapped large trees and flipped vehicles in the Browns’ yard. It was one of two Rossburn-area homes to be damaged by the tornado.

Brian, who estimated the thrash of the tornado lasted about 10 seconds, said the couple was lucky to be alive.

“When I got up, the room was full of debris. Every picture on the wall, and all the way up the stairs, was down — gone,” said Brian, the former mayor of Rossburn, about 300 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg.

“If it had happened half an hour earlier, some of us would be dead and if it happened a couple hours later — if we were in bed — we’d really be dead because that southeast corner is our bedroom.”

It wasn’t until after the tornado had hit that he received a notification about it on his cellphone, Brian said.

He and his wife were in shock Monday while they assessed the damage to their house, which was built in 1904, and outbuildings. The couple has lived in the house, a municipally designated historic building, since 2004.

Jocelyne Hebert, the Browns’ daughter, said several of the couple’s cats were missing as of Monday afternoon. Later in the day, all three house cats had been accounted for. The Browns’ horses were also OK.

Family members travelled to Rossburn to support the Browns in the tornado’s aftermath. Hebert, from Oakbank, likened the destruction to a “war zone.”

“All you could see (driving up) was half a barn and all these trees exposing the house, which is normally nestled inside this thick layer of forest,” Hebert said. “It looks like a movie. The bricks are falling off. Half the house is gone.

“We walked into the house, and the dressers and the kitchen and things are ripped apart. There’s glass everywhere.”

The Browns’ belongings were scattered around the property. Some items were embedded in the ground. A bedspread and other belongings were hanging from trees.

“All the trees, like over 100-year-old trees, were all broken in half like nothing,” Hebert said.

She said her 76-year-old parents spent years restoring the home that they retired to. Her father grew up in Rossburn.

Hebert said it’s unclear what’s next for her parents, but they will have to look for a place to stay in the short term.

“My parents have lost everything. It’s very surreal,” she said.

The other house that was damaged belongs to the Browns’ neighbours, who were not home, Hebert said.

Rossburn Fire Chief Kelly Slon said by the time crews got to that house, extended family and neighbours were there to check on the property.

A detached garage and shed were destroyed, and the home’s roof was damaged, Slon said. Some Hydro poles were downed. Large, mature oak trees snapped “like twigs,” Slon said.

“I’ve been doing this for 40 years, I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said.

Brian Proctor, meteorologist for Environment and Climate Change Canada, confirmed a tornado touched down near Rossburn. Wind gusts of 100 km/h were reported in the area.

A second tornado was reported near Roblin, about 400 km northwest of Winnipeg near the Saskatchewan border, shortly before 9 p.m. The report was not confirmed as of Monday afternoon.

Photos provided to the Free Press showed damaged outbuildings and grain bins, and snapped trees at properties near Roblin.

Researchers from the Northern Tornadoes Project were deployed to Rossburn Monday to survey the damage and give the tornado an official rating on the Enhanced Fujita Scale.

Director David Sills said based on the destruction he’s seen so far, the tornado is pegged at an EF-2 storm, which is considered significant and can involve winds of from 111 to 135 km/h. Manitoba last recorded an EF-2 tornado in 2023.

“It was a strong tornado,” Sills said. “Houses with the roof gone and some walls down, and when you get into that kind of thing it’s at least EF-2 damage.”

The team needs more information about the possible tornado near Roblin before determining its validity and scale.

Manitoba has recorded five tornadoes so far this year, which is typical for the province. July is peak season.

Barb Inkster was driving west along Highway 16 near Rossburn Sunday evening when she saw the storm forming. She pulled over to take photos as clouds turned into a funnel.

“As it was moving, it was getting bigger and bigger, and I was just amazed,” she said. “I’m sure I was sitting in my car with my mouth open. I have never seen anything like that before.”

The tornado near Rossburn travelled along Provincial Road 264 south of the community. No injuries were reported, deputy mayor Adam Grabowski said.

Grabowski said he expects there to be damage to crops in the area, based on videos he’s seen of the storm.

The tornado destroyed some of Manitoba Hydro’s infrastructure in the Rossburn area. About 280 customers lost power Sunday night, spokeswoman Amy-Jean MacLean said.

She said a small number of customers were still without power Monday afternoon due to significant damage to a roughly 1.6-km section of a power line. Repairs are scheduled to begin Tuesday.

Hydro reported scattered outages in the Roblin area.

“We are working as quickly as possible to safely restore power, but crews are having some difficulty accessing damaged equipment,” MacLean wrote in an email.

Grabowski said tornadoes are not common in the Municipality of Rossburn, which is home to about 1,000 people. The last one in recent memory was in 2016, when a tornado damaged a home in Waywayseecappo First Nation, about 10 kilometres west of Rossburn.

“This year of weather has been odd,” he said. “The amount of severe thunderstorms we have seen, it is concerning to think, what do we have to prepare for?”

The province’s Parkland region has been slammed by severe weather over the last month. In early June a one-in-200-year rain event soaked the area and flooded hundreds of homes, prompting several states of emergencies and voluntary evacuations.

Flash flooding resulted in lengthy power outages and several highways and roads were washed out. The province had to cut several highways to relieve pressure from built up rivers and lakes.

An overland flood warning was issued for parts of western Manitoba on Monday. Water levels on the Shellmouth Reservoir (Lake of the Prairies), Rivers Dam (Lake Wahtopanah), Minnedosa Dam and Dauphin Lake could rise by up to a metre due to significant rainfall in the coming days, the province said in its latest flood bulletin.

— with files from the Brandon Sun

fpcity@freepress.mb.ca