Jeff Griffin is hoping that damage to the Humber Valley Rowing Club’s equipment is minimal after its storage trailer was tipped over in Corner Brook sometime overnight Wednesday.
The incident possibly occurred during the peak of the high winds that hit the west coast through the night and continued into Thursday.
Griffin, the club’s president, said the damage was discovered Thursday morning.
The trailer which serves as the club’s boat house at its Brakes Cove location in the summer was filled with oars, boats, lifejackets and other equipment.
He was able to take a glance inside, but couldn’t say for sure how much damage there was.
The ditch the trailer blew into normally doesn’t have water in it, but Griffin said there was about five feet of water in it on Thursday.
“So, the water is probably in the trailer as well.”
Another shed used to store the club’s time tables and booking board was completely blown away.
“You can’t even see any remains of it. It’s actually just disappeared. It’s broken into a hundred pieces. Apparently, the wood is all out in the water floating around,” he said.
Everything is insured, so Griffin said the club will just wait to see extent of the damage.
He is a bit nervous though as the club’s boats are a little bit older.
“We get by with what we can,” he said.
“It’s not good. It’s definitely not something you want to see.”
But like everything, Griffin said the club always seems to survive.
“Take the positives out of it. It’s out of season, we’re not missing any rowing time, nobody got hurt,” he said.
The wind also brought down a telecommunications cable that ended up across a Newfoundland and Labrador English School District bus as it made the turn from Wellington Street onto St. Claire Avenue Thursday morning.
There were no students onboard the bus at the time.
Cheryl Gullage, manager of communications for the district, said the cable came across a mirror on the front of the bus.
The incident occurred at 7:15 a.m. and the roads were closed to traffic until around 9 a.m.
The driver of the bus was not injured and returned to work.
The incident did have a bit of an impact on bus operations as a few routes had to be rerouted, but Gullage could not confirm that it resulted in any delays.
The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary and the Corner Brook Fire Department responded to the scene.
The RNC’s media relations officer Shawna Park said it’s believed the cable came down sometime overnight as a result of the high winds.
Crews with Newfoundland Power were kept busy throughout the day responding to weather related outages.
Michelle Coughlan, the utility’s manager of public affairs, told The Western Star in an email that high winds, driving rain and heavy wet snow caused outages for some customers.
Throughout the day outages were reported in Bonne Bay Pond, Cormack, Reidville, Gallants, Spruce Brook, Burnt Islands, Rose Blanche, Gull Pond and Port aux Basques.
In many cases the cause was downed trees over power lines.
While there were no school closures in Corner Brook, the weather, which included snow in some areas, resulted in closures in Cow Head, Burgeo, Grey River, Port aux Basques, Hampden and La Scie.
And the weather made travelling a little difficult with advisories to stay off the Trans-Canada Highway in several areas, including the Wreck House where winds reached up to 130 kilometres per hour.
