A Windsor woman says a broken down car may have been a blessing in disguise after severe weather ripped the roof from a nearby home and sent it crashing onto her Ford Boulevard property. Nicole Brieda wasn’t home when the storm moved through Windsor on Thursday. She was stranded in her car on Jefferson Boulevard after it broke down while she was out grocery shopping. Then her neighbours started texting. “They sent me a picture, and she’s like, there’s a roof on your house,” Brieda recalled. She said she quickly began contacting family members for help, unsure of what was happening at her home. Her daughter was the first to arrive and found damage to the property’s exterior railing and landscaping, but no broken windows. Brieda’s dog, Max, was also home at the time. “Thankfully, nobody was home,” she said. “So, I feel very blessed that, you know, nobody was hurt. My heart goes up to the family that lost their home.” The roof had been torn from a home on Buckingham Road and landed on Brieda’s property five doors away on Ford Boulevard. The storm also knocked down trees and branches across the neighbourhood, with significant damage reported along Riverside Drive. Brieda said a brick wall on her property was also knocked down, which she believes helped slow the roof before it struck her home. “It took down a whole brick wall,” she said. “I think this, like, kind of slowed down the speed of the whole roof hitting my house.” The damage was difficult for Brieda to process when she finally returned home. “It just, it’s surreal,” she said. “There’s no words.” Her neighbour Sandra Smith said residents are accustomed to strong storms moving in from the Detroit River, but Thursday’s weather was unlike anything she had experienced. “We get some good storms off the river, but never anything like this, that’s for sure,” Smith said. The storm also left vehicles damaged in the area. Rocky Francis was working his first day with Prime Time Towing on Friday and was called to Ford Boulevard to remove a damaged vehicle. He said he had experienced the storm himself, taking shelter under a bridge because of the strong winds. “You know, Mother Nature. What are you gonna do?” Francis said. “Be safe out there.” Windsor-Tecumseh-Lakeshore MP Kathy Borrelli also stopped by the neighbourhood Friday to assess the damage. She said the lack of injuries or loss of life was fortunate, but echoed calls for improved severe weather radar in Windsor-Essex. Borrelli said she received only a short amount of warning before the storm hit her location. “I got a couple minutes notice,” she said. “My alert on my phone didn’t go off till about a minute before my location was hit with the storm.” Borrelli said she agrees with Essex MP Chris Lewis that improvements are needed to the region’s severe weather warning system. “We should listen, and we should follow through and make sure there’s some changes in that regard,” she told CTV News. The City of Windsor is asking residents with downed trees to report them through 311, either online or through the city’s 311 app. The reports will help crews add affected properties to their cleanup list. The city also plans to use the addresses to determine where additional yard-waste collection will be needed for trees damaged by this week’s storms. According to Brieda, the cleanup is secondary to what could have happened. “At the end of the day, we’re all okay,” she said. “And that’s all that matters.”
