Owner of Wreckhouse cabins blown off their foundations plans to rebuild

A Port aux Basques man is trying to get his cabins back in a row in the Wreckhouse area of southwest Newfoundland after three of them blew off their foundationson Sunday.

Mac Seaward owns several tourist cabins on the edge of a river in an area known as Red Rocks.

• High winds rip houses from foundation in Port aux Basques area

Mother Nature is hard to beat, but I'm going to see, next time around,if I can beat Mother Nature.- Mac Seaward

Seaward got a call from a neighbour in the middle of the wind storm to tell him two of three unoccupied cabins had blown into the river.

By the time Seaward drove the 20 kilometres to the scene, he watched asthe third one was torn from its foundation.

"Just as I arrived on the parking lot, he came there and he said 'Now that third one there, I don't think that's going to last very long.' And that blew over right in front of our eyes," he told Corner Brook Morning.

"Two [pieces] of glass in my car blew out at the same time, the front glass in the driver's door and the little corner one in the back door blew out."

Car windows shattered by wind

It's believed the windows were damaged after a gust picked up a rock on the parking lot and slammed it into the glass.

Seaward said all three cabins were newly built, but hadn't been completely secured on their concrete foundations when the winds struck.

Environment Canada recorded gusts of 159 km/h in the area on Sunday.

The Wreckhouseis infamous for its high winds, regularly reaching in excess of 200 km/h.

In the past when there was still a Newfoundland railway crossing the island winds frequently blew trains off the narrow-gauge tracks.

Even today, despite better forecasting and other safety improvements, transport trucks still frequently blow over.

• Transport trucks no match for Wreckhouse gusts

Hugh Osmond of Port aux Basques was at Red Rocks on Sunday and captured the spectacle on video.

Location, location, location

He says the geography of the area is a big factor in why winds gust so highly there.

"This only comes from southeast winds only. It comes off the mountain, down over the edge of the mountain, hits the pond, picks water up and takes it across the pond towards the highway," he told Corner Brook Morning.

"There where those houses are, the mountains west of that almost meet each other and the wind tunnels in there and comes up along there too, so it meets both ways there."

High wind damage outside Port aux Basques

8 years ago

Duration 1:08

Hugh Osmond grabbed his camera on the afternoon of Nov. 27 and headed straight for the Trans-Canada Highway outside Port aux Basques to capture footage of high winds.

Osmond saidit only took an hour for all three cabins to be ripped from the foundations once the storm hit.

Despite having no insurance on the cabins, Mac Seaward remains hopeful he can rebuild.

On Tuesday, he had a 60-tonne crane coming from Corner Brook to try to put the cabins back on their foundations.

A vow to rebuild

The fully-furnished cabins were heavily damaged, but Seaward hopes to make repairs to the two that sustained the least damage and have them open for rental in time for next year's tourism season.

"I never dreamed in a million years that it would happen," he said. "It's a very high wind area, but the wind this weekend was exceptional."

"Mother Nature is hard to beat, but I'm going to see, next time around, if I can beat Mother Nature."