Crews continue to clean up in aftermath of Sunday storm

Cleaning up from Sunday's storm From CTV Kitchener’s Leighanne Evans: Crews are busy cleaning up damage after a wicked wind storm blew through on Sunday.

CAMBRIDGE — Crews are still working to clean up after a windstorm swept through Waterloo Region on Sunday.

The storm produced gusts of nearly 120 kilometres an hour, knocking down trees and leaving others in precarious positions.

Crews have spent the start of the week assessing the damage and working to clean up the debris.

"I would say we probably have over 100 calls in right now," said Joey DePinto, an arborist with the City of Cambridge. "Anything from small limbs on the ground to fully felled trees laying across roads and on hydro lines."

"We're up to about 10 to 15 trees at least," arborist apprentice Aaron Owens said. "It's a slow process getting them, especially when they're down already.

DePinto said you never know what you're going to get when winds are that strong.

"We had a call just over in Preston, there was a tree that actually came down and crushed a beautiful backyard ice rink that somebody had," Owens said.

Officials in Kitchener said crews will likely be cleaning up debris for the next couple of weeks. They said COVID-19 has impacted some operations, but the city has maintained full forestry support in 2020.

Waterloo officials said they didn't get a lot of calls for downed trees on Sunday, but calls continue to come in. There were 14 new calls on Tuesday.

In Guelph, crews rearranged resources to ensure priority tree maintenance continued as efficiently as possible during the pandemic.

Brian Geerts, manager of operations, forestry and horticulture with the City of Cambridge, said some work has been deferred this year due to COVID-19.

"To keep the city's overall cost contained, but never compromising public safety in any way," he said.

DePinto said the pandemic hasn't really slowed his work down.

"We've basically been working right through it," he said. "I wold say maybe, if anything, our volume has increased. People at home see a lot more and what's on their front yard."