It was just one scene among many, with video taken from a CTV News Toronto helicopter showing downed trees, damaged homes and barns and debris strewn across the community of Actinolite, Ont. right after the storm.
Brandon Albert says his truck was thrown off Highway 7 in this field near Actinolite, Ont. on July 25, 2022 as a tornado passed through the area. (Image: CTV News Toronto)
But it was the truck that caught the attention of Tweed, Ont. Mayor Jo-anne Albert during an interview with CTV News at Six.
“That truck you just saw on your report was my grandson,” Albert told lead presenter Graham Richardson. “Well yes, it was an awful day and an awful night.”
Brandon Albert tells CTV News he was on his way home when the storm hit. He was driving on Highway 7 through heavy rain with almost no visibility and said flying rocks were hitting his truck as he approached Actinolite.
He stopped and that’s when his truck left the road.
“The next thing you know, you could just feel this huge gust of wind and it basically threw me right into the field across the freeway to the left,” he said in a telephone interview.
“I was definitely blown away. I was probably about 80 feet off the road,” he explained. “The person I know who was behind me said my truck must have hit the power lines. I was as high as the lines.”
Albert said he was injured on the landing but feels “pretty lucky” to have survived.
“It happened very quickly, obviously, and I never would have thought my full-size truck would have been thrown off the road, but it sure did,” he said.
Investigators gave the storm a preliminary EF-1 rating, with winds approaching 175 kilometers per hour.
Albert says he thinks it was stronger than that.
“I don’t expect any wind to blow the truck off the road or pick the truck up and take you all the way,” he said. “He threw me right across the road … The last thing I remember, I was from a dead stop and I was thrown into the truck and I landed and I was in the field.”
Albert said his friend, who was following him, was spun by the wind and his vehicle was damaged.
“It actually broke the wheels of the car. He ended up staying on the road, but spun right in the opposite direction. He couldn’t move. It was just stuck right in the middle, but it was fine, no injuries,” Albert said.
He said some friends compared his condition to the movie “Twister.”
“It honestly still seems pretty crazy. I would have never imagined that this would happen,” he said. “I don’t want to say the right place at the right time, but I guess that was it.”
–With files from Graham Richardson of CTV News Ottawa.
