Michael Cerulli got a call about 10 p.m. Wednesday from police to say a tornado touched down near the building he owns.
When he arrived at the industrial building, Cerulli saw a tractor trailer on its side, with a driver apparently still trapped inside, and a shack that had blown clear across the street from the Crevier building. The corner of his building’s roof had peeled off and several trees were uprooted. One door of the multiunit building was blown off and an outer window was shattered.
The Brossard tornado was confirmed by Environment Canada Thursday. It sent debris swirling hundred of metres in the air.
Cerulli’s Entreprises TLM rents out units to companies from the building on Matte Blvd., near Highway 30 in Brossard’s industrial park. On Thursday morning, the remnants of the shack and overturned trees were still on the building’s lawn. The building appeared to be the most damaged in the area. Next door, a lawn-supply company had some damage to its roof, while a trailer at the nearby Centre Plein Air Brossard on des Prairies Blvd. and a shipping container had been blown onto their sides.
“I was definitely surprised,” Cerulli said Thursday morning, in front of the building as a light drizzle fell. “You don’t expect ‘Brossard’ and ‘tornado’ in the same sentence. We got a shock when we got the call saying the building was hit by a tornado.”
Water got into the upper floor of the building and Cerulli was still assessing the overall damage.
“We have to get onto the roof to see the extent of it,” he said.
Environment Canada said it “provisionally concludes” tornadoes also touched down in Cap-Santé, just west of Quebec City, and St-Hippolyte, north of St-Jérôme.
In St-Hippolyte around 4 p.m., trees were uprooted, infrastructure damaged and two cm of hail fell, the agency said. The municipality said a house caught fire when a tree fell on an electrical system.
In Cap-Santé, the tornado “caused extensive damages to a farm early in the evening,” Environment Canada said.
The twister in Brossard formed around 8 p.m. on Matte Blvd. Longueuil police, who also patrol Brossard, said the driver of the overturned tractor trailer was slightly injured.
Cerulli, who lives 10 minutes away from the property, also in Brossard, said he was at home, “and the storm was pretty bad. You couldn’t see out the window at one point. It was a heavy downpour with lots of rain and lightning.”
He said he wasn’t aware a tornado warning had been issued for the area.
Environment Canada only issued a tornado warning for the Lachute area on Wednesday. Meteorologist Michèle Fleury said she was not expecting to see a tornado appear on the South Shore, where there was a risk of tornado but where storm activity was less visible on radar.
“It took us a little bit by surprise but we did, however, forecast severe thunderstorms,” she said.
Heavy rains swept southern Quebec on Wednesday night, most notably in Montreal, the Laurentians, Lanaudière and in the Montérégie.
The Canadian Press contributed to this report.