Wind gusts of up to 100 km/h today kept hydro, fire and city crews busy Friday evening restoring power and making rescues.
"As you can probably imagine North Bay Fire was incredibly busy responding to calls for assistance this evening," said Deputy Fire Chief Greg Saunders. "We have so far attended in excess of 20 calls ranging from trees falling on cars to people trapped in their cars by falling wires to structural issues at the Sands motel causing North Bay Fire to make the decision to shut down part of Fisher Street."
"Clearly there are a number of power lines down in the City. Our partners at North Bay Hydro have been working with fire crews to ensure that the residents of North Bay remain safe from the dangers presented by the downed wires."
North Bay Hydro said, "There is a major power outage on a Hydro One feeder that feeds our North Bay Hydro substations. Approximately 3,000 customers are out of power. Estimated restoration time is midnight." The Hwy 63 - Anita to City Limits area was also without power for an extended period but had it restored by 7:15.
Fisher was closed as officials were worried that the roof of the Sands Motel would blow off. Debris could be seen flying from the roof.
Paul Lamarche was keeping watch over the partially demolished hotel. He works for the company that owns the property.
"We're providing security here so that people don't walk past the pieces of soffit that are flying off and some plywood," he told BayToday. I saw with my own eyes that the front part of the roof was lifting and it would come back down when the wind subsided."
Fisher was closed around 7 p.m. as a precaution.
"There are some pieces of soffit still dangling down. There's not much we can do right now.
Lamarche expects an engineer to inspect the building and the roof will have to have some work done to keep it down.
"This is the first time I've ever seen anything like this."
It wasn't just his building.
"There was all kinds of debris was coming down the street, I guess from the Hands building, some leftover building material like insulation and garbage cans flying down the road.
Power is out in some parts of the city and some traffic lights were out.
Downed trees and branches littered the roads, especially on lakefront roads. Peninsula Road was apparently badly hit.
It wasn't all bad.
Cars lined the waterfront with headlights on making the spray from crashing waves look like millions of diamonds as they flew through the air.
"It's so beautiful," one watcher said. "I've never seen anything like it.
See related story: Tens of thousands without power following tornado in Ottawa region
