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It was a dark and stormy night
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Hurricane Hazel hit with devastating swiftness
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| By Tom G. Kernaghan |
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Fifty years ago on the morning of Oct. 16, Torontonians awoke to the
inconceivable: their city ravaged by a hurricane. For the unfortunate people on lower
ground or near riverbanks, Hurricane Hazel had made its terrifying introduction several
hours before. Eighty-one people were dead, thousands were left homeless, and the city
was in shock.
On the night of October 15, after three days of rain, many went to bed convinced they
were in for another safe but soggy night. Hurricane Hazel had been wreaking havoc in
the Caribbean and Carolina. But here in Toronto, Hazel was already old news. Here,
hurricanes were nothing to fear. Misled by this cozy belief, which was supported by
low-key weather reports, most expected Hazel to lose punch around the Allegheny Mountains
before turning eastward.
They we were wrong. Worse, they were unprepared.
Hazel pushed past New York and crossed Lake Ontario. As the storm reached the north
shore it collided with strong cold front. The result was catastrophic. Hazel unleashed
its terrible fury on the saturated and unsuspecting city. With awesome force, its
72-mile-per-hour gusts and billions of gallons of rain turned full rivers into raging
torrents, washing out bridges, undercutting asphalt, tossing large vehicles, submerging
buildings, and ending lives with mind-boggling swiftness, particularly to the north and
west of the city. The storm caused $25 million in damage.
Downtown, heavy rain and powerful wind pounded the lakeshore with ferocity, leaving
Sunnyside Beach strewn with debris and refuse from the northeastern United States.
The rainwater rose well above curbs, hectoring pedestrians as they left work. Trains
to and from Union Station were cancelled, traffic jams set records for delays, and
heavy rain became a torrential downpour. The underpass on King Street West near
Dufferin Street became hazardous, shallow rivers lapped against downtown buildings,
and basements almost everywhere were flooded.
Eventually the rain eased.
Ken Steele, of Dovercourt Road, was walking home around 11:00 p.m. that night. He felt
a strange, eerie calm in the air—it was perfectly quiet. It was almost like being in
vacuum. He went to bed, unaware of the horror taking place on the Humber River.
Indeed, those living on relatively high ground awoke to the realization of Hazel’s
full devastation. Roman Tarnovetsky, a seven-year-old living near Dundas Street West
and Ossington Avenue, rode with his family to the lower ground of Queen Street and
Roncesvalles Avenue to see the damage.
Hazel was a wake-up call to our need to better understand floods and how to control
them. Many of those who lost their lives on that dark night had been living on cleared
floodplains.
In 1957, four existing conservation authorities came together and formed the
Metropolitan Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, now the Toronto and Region
Conservation (TRC).
Since then, motivated by core principles of public safety, education and action, the
TRC has studied flood control, purchased floodplains, cultivated our vast parklands,
and shared their knowledge with policymakers and the public, in the hope of preventing
future disasters.
“We have incredible parklands and valleys,” says Deputy Mayor and Councillor Joe
Pantalone (Trinity-Spadina, Ward 20). “They are the defining elements of the city.
We owe a vote of thanks to that interpretation [of the disaster].”
“This is an important anniversary,” he adds. “A lesson was learned. Disasters spur
action. If people are smart, they will learn from them, and we did.”
(History section – The Liberty Gleaner – October 2004 issue)
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