By Lara Fominoff @fomsy1 on Twitter

Dairy farm badly damaged during Tuesday’s windstorm *CAUTION-GRAPHIC PHOTO*

Oct 19, 2017 | 11:04 AM

PARK LAKE –“They were upset…. in shock. The cows that are injured, it’ll take a few days to get their production back.”
 
Park Lake Dairy Farm Manager John Waldner says Tuesday afternoon’s windstorm was nothing like he’d ever seen since he began working at the acreage north of Lethbridge.
 
“Few years ago, we seen a little twirler out here, but that was nothin’ compared to that wind here [Tuesday].”
 
Around 4 p.m. he and his assistant Jim were in one of the barns when everything literally went sideways.
 
“The wind was goin’ quite strong, at about I would say 120. More the big gusts, comin’ right? We just got talking and he says ‘look over there!’ We just seen the whole roof of the shelter next door flying across, landing into the milk cows corral.”
 
Moments before, the two men had let the cows out of one of the barns, and many of the animals didn’t have a chance to scatter or get out of the way. They were right in the path of a steel and wood roof.
 
About half a dozen were trapped underneath it, while the walls of the barn it was sitting on a just few minutes earlier, collapsed.
 
Several of the animals were able to get up from underneath the downed roof, while a few remained trapped.
 
“A few we rescued with a loader right away, and one got stuck underneath, probably broke her back when the roof landed. We couldn’t get her out. Then the wind started rippin’ loose the other roof of the milk cow’s barn.”
 
As Waldner began driving the loader towards the second building where they were standing moments before, the wind once again became so strong that it nearly tipped the front loader on its side with him in it.
 
“I basically reached up with the loader,” he explains. “And it [the wind] took my front end and flipped me, just about. That’s how bad the wind was.”
 
He was able to finally get a bale of hay on top of the roof, to keep it from blowing away as well, pinning it with the bucket.
 
Waldner says they’re still waiting for an insurance assessment on the damage, so they can’t move the downed roof, or begin re-building just yet.
 
“I do have other places I can put the cows for now, right? The main thing is the cows that got wounded survived, they’re healing up. We can always replace the barn. You know what I mean?”
 
Both men say they’re thankful they weren’t out with the animals, or they could have been killed.
 
“The roof took down those big animals so fast,” says Jim. “Can you imagine what it would have done to a person?”