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Shernette Shaw-Clarke moved into her newly built Clavet home less than two months ago, and now parts of it are destroyed, making it unlivable.
On the evening of Aug. 13, Shaw-Clarke was putting her three-and-a-half month old baby boy, Zyaire, to sleep on the second floor of their house.
Around that time, neighbour Kimberly Little’s husband was saying he didn’t like the look of the clouds coming in across the gravel road.
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That’s when Little noticed a small dust cloud coming across her house that was “very turbulent.”
“I saw the trees and the grass to the south here just sort of flatten,” she said, as the cats on her back deck scattered.
Little watched as that cloud moved across her property towards Shaw-Clarke’s house.
“In like split seconds…we felt the house shaking. And I was like, ‘No, this is not an earthquake. This is definitely a tornado’,” Shaw-Clarke said.
She grabbed her baby, rushing down to the basement with her husband.
Across the road, Little watched as the cloud, “took their garage and opened the roof.” Shortly after, the rain started falling so hard that Little couldn’t see past her deck.
Inside Shaw-Clarkes’ basement, alarms started blaring and her husband began shutting off the electricity and gas.
Within a couple of minutes, the storm passed.
That’s when Shaw-Clarke came up from her basement and realized, “Well, the house is ruined.”
Neighbour Kimberly Little said she thinks the garage “sort of twisted” off, clipping the home’s “upper eave.” (Marija Robinson/650 CKOM)
‘Carnage’ where home once stood
Once the rain cleared, Little saw, “the carnage that was left” of her neighbour’s home.
The storm took out the Shaw-Clarkes’ two-car garage, siding, and part of its roof.
“We could just see stuff coming out of the attic, which I assume was all of the blowing insulation,” Little said.
Even with all the damage, though, Shaw-Clarke was able to get the necessities out.
But, she said she feels “disheartened.”
“It’s a newly-built house. We love it so much. We worked hard for it,” Shaw-Clarke said, adding how she and her husband moved to Clavet to give Zyaire a peaceful life. But, “as soon as we breathed that breath of fresh air, then the storm came.”
She is staying in a Saskatoon hotel for the time being, where she’s still processing what happened. She woke up thinking it might have been a dream.
While the reality is that her home is uninhabitable, according to Shaw-Clarke, insurance is taking care of it.
For now, she’s grateful her family is safe and looks forward to rebuilding and going back to the “life that we loved” in Clavet.
Not a tornado, Environment Canada says
Little has her theory on what took out Shaw-Clarke’s house.
She said another neighbour saw “two dirt devils,” headed in the direction of their homes.
“I now believe they’re both tornadoes, and the one… which was right in line with our house, dissipated. The other one took out their garage,” Little said.
But on Aug. 14, meteorologist Robyn Dyck said there were no reports of tornadoes touching down in Saskatchewan during the Aug. 13 storms, although there were a handful of funnel clouds.
She also said the fast-moving storm generated strong winds.
Either way, Little said those types of storms are rare in Clavet.
“Nothing like that has happened around here since we’ve been here in the nine years,” she said.
— With files from 980 CJME’s Abby Zieverink
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