Communities come together to clean up storm damage

Hundreds of thousands of trees have been damaged by ice. Some communities were hit harder than others, like Freelton, just north of Hamilton.

The neighbourhood of Wildan Estates is a community with big lots of trees, so when it comes to damage, the clean-up is a community effort. The plan is to gather in a group and go from house to house, cut down damaged trees, and bring the branches to the roadside.

Linda O’Hagan said Saturday, “we are helping those that need it the most , we have some elderly people and some sick people, so we are doing their homes first and we are going to go until we run out of steam.”

There are about 100 homes in the Wildan Estates community, and at the height of the storm power was out for more than 36 hours.

While many local residents are taking part in the clean up, some have come in from out of town to help out. Jason McCracken, who has relatives here made the trip down from Muskoka. He says, “well just trying to help out, do what I do best with a chain saw-cut tress and climb trees.”