Tornado turns Barrie neighbourhood into 'disaster area'

Barrie Coun. Natalie Harris had just arrived to visit her son, Adam, when her ex called to tell them to get to the basement ASAP.

Seconds later, a suspected tornado ripped through the neighbourhood. 

“Adam had just got in the basement and not even a minute later we heard the loudest (noise). Something for sure was hitting the house. My son just threw me to the ground … dust started coming down into the basement. Something really bad has happened to the house,” she told BarrieToday from St. Gabriel School where they were taken for safety.

“When I went upstairs when it calmed down, the roof was gone and I could see the sky. Our house is gone," she said. 

The two-storey house next door had the entire second floor ripped off, she said. Thankfully, no one was home when the tornado hit.

“All of Sun King (Crescent) is completely a disaster area. There are lines down over on Prince William Way… there are Simcoe Paramedics, York Region, Peel, OPP …. Everybody is here filling up the buses because there will be a lot of people displaced.”

Harris said to the best of her knowledge, there were no serious injuries on her street. 

“Luckily there weren’t people home in the majorly destroyed homes. My son and I literally just lived through a tornado and my two dogs … if he had been upstairs in his room he would be dead. I can’t even process it… but I am ok.”

Deanne Sukhdeo and her family live on Succession Crescent, and said her two daughters were home when the tornado hit.

"They are very shaken up right now,” she said. “The back of my house has siding off, a piece of wood broke through my bathroom (and) patio furniture (is) destroyed.