The 25th Anniversary of Black Friday
Original Air Date:
Monday, July 30, 2012
3:04 p.m., Friday July 31st, 1987. A tornado warning is issued for the city of Edmonton. At 3:25 p.m. the tornado hits Mill Woods with F2 intensity. Gathering strength, it continues across the Sherwood Park freeway to refinery row causing F4 damage and 12 deaths. It continues its path of destruction north to the Evergreen Mobile Park where it takes 17 more lives. By 4:25 p.m. the tornado has ravaged the city for an entire hour.
The 1987 tornado was one of the worst natural disasters in Canada’s history. It reached wind speeds of 416 kilometres per hour - just three kilometres below an F5, the highest rating possible. The twister killed 27 people, injured 300, and left a scar on Alberta’s Capital Region that can't be measured in numbers.
Nine-year-old Scarlett Eyben was in the backseat of her grandma's station wagon that fateful day. The tornado carried their car 150 metres into the air, and remarkably, set them gently back down. The group sustained only minor cuts and scratches, but, they say, the emotional wounds, they will carry forever.
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Feature
A Sherwood Park woman has taken on the remarkable task of rescuing and caring for injured, mistreated, and unwanted horses—going so far as to take in over one hundred at one time.