Two people narrowly avoided serious injuries after a tree came crashing onto the windshield of their sports utility vehicle, blocking a portion of the Trans-Canada Highway in both directions for two hours on Tuesday.
Steven Whitmore was in a large truck behind the southbound car just past Finlayson Arm Road when he saw three or four trees topple down from the embankment just after 10 a.m.
“I thought the whole bank was falling away, I thought it was a landslide,” said Whitmore, a volunteer firefighter for Otter Point Fire.
One tree hit the hood and windshield of the car and the other trees fell just behind the car.
“It was horrific,” Whitmore said.
He ran over to help the man and woman inside. The airbags had deployed and the two were shaken.
The woman in the passenger seat had cuts and was covered in glass from the broken windshield.
Langford Fire, West Shore RCMP and B.C. Ambulance responded. Paramedics treated the man and the woman.
“They’re going to be OK,” said Langford Fire Chief Bob Beckett.
Whitmore said luckily traffic was moving slowly when the trees fell, due to a dump truck that was climbing the uphill slope of the highway. “It was all I could do not to cry that they got out alive,” Whitmore said.
The fire department worked with the Ministry of Transportation to remove the fallen trees.
Crews cut down other trees from the slope that appeared unstable and used chainsaws to cut apart the thick trunks that stretched across both lanes of the highway.
Traffic was snarled several kilometres in both directions until the highway was reopened about 12:30 p.m.
It’s unclear what caused the trees along the highway to topple but Environment Canada issued a wind warning Tuesday morning for south Vancouver Island, including Tofino.
High winds sent trees down across power lines, knocking out power at one point for more than 7,000 customers on southern Vancouver Island, including Sooke, Victoria, Central Saanich, Highlands, Saanich, View Royal and Salt Spring Island.
In Greater Victoria, gusts of 60 km/h to nearly 80 km/h were recorded between 6 a.m. and 1 p.m.
Jürgen Ehlting, an associate professor at the University of Victoria’s biology department and Centre for Forest Biology, said a tall thin spruce tree came down in his family’s Gordon Head backyard.
“We didn’t hear anything, but in the morning our kids went downstairs and came running back up saying there was a big tree in our patio,” Ehlting said.
“Fortunately nothing really happened. It just came down between the play equipment and fell onto the patio.” No one was hurt and nothing was really damaged, he said.
Ehlting, who specializes in tree genetics and biochemistry, plans to rent a chainsaw and cut his newly fallen tree into firewood.
kderosa@timescolonist.com
ceharnett@timescolonist.como
