ICLR Friday Forum: Ottawa/Gatineau tornado outbreak damage surveys (October 12, 2018)

On October 12, 2018, ICLR held a Friday Forum webinar featuring Emilio Hong and Aaron Jaffe of Western University on the Ottawa/Gatineau tornado damage surveys. On September 21, 2018, a large system of thunderstorms moved across Ontario, resulting in one of the largest tornado outbreaks that Canada has seen in the last few years. Six tornadoes were confirmed to have touched down in eastern Ontario and southern Quebec, the strongest of which were an EF-3 tornado that caused significant damage to Dunrobin, ON and Gatineau, QC, and an EF-2 tornado that swept through the Nepean area of Ottawa. Immediately following the outbreak, damage surveys were conducted by engineers from Western University and meteorologists from Environment and Climate Change Canada. Over two days, the team surveyed damage in the hardest hit areas of Dunrobin, Nepean and Gatineau. This damage survey focused on the damage to houses, low-rise buildings and trees throughout the areas. The goal of this investigation was to capture enough information from the tornadoes to continue growing our tornado database and better understand these storms and their effects. This session highlighted some of the observations made during the damage surveys, discussed the methodology and techniques used and shared some of the preliminary conclusions from the investigation. Emilio Hong is a research engineer and PhD student at Western University. He has been on damage surveys for the last five years, highlighted by tornadoes in Angus, ON in 2014, Windsor, ON in 2016, the outbreak of Quebec tornadoes in 2017 and Hurricane Irma in 2017. His research includes wind tunnel testing for walls of low- to high-rise buildings and working on the Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP), identifying tornadoes based on aerial imagery and tree fall patterns. His PhD work is focused on re-examining damage indicators for tornadoes based on forensic analysis. Aaron Jaffe is currently a MESc student in wind engineering and a full-time research engineer at Western University. He has worked alongside senior engineers and meteorologists for the Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP). The NTP focuses on assessing the damage from tornadoes in Ontario and the rest of Canada, with a special focus on gaining additional information on northern tornadoes that are normally unreported and must be detected by other methods, including satellite. Aaron’s student research work focuses on internal pressures in residential structures caused by significant openings in the structure in tornadoes and other severe wind events.