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<\/p>\nRichard Zipchen, who works for the village as its water and sewer operator and maintenance worker, watched the storm unfold from his home, where he took shelter in the basement with his son.<\/p>\n
\t<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw trees uprooted, just like God was picking them from the air, and no real damage to houses, but a lot of outbuildings are damaged and destroyed, as you can see,\u201d said Zipchen, who has lived in Speers since 2010.<\/p>\n
Zipchen said the community escaped what could have been a far worse outcome.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were no lives lost or anybody even hurt. And I think even all the pets survived. So all in all, it turned out okay.\u201d<\/p>\n
Around the village, residents were still discovering the full extent of the storm\u2019s impact.<\/p>\n
Michael Cope said a section of roofing metal had been left hanging from power lines on Main Street, while an entire storage shed had been blown across a road.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s basically just clean up, clean up, clean up,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Cope, who lived in Speers for more than two decades before moving to the Battlefords, returned Saturday to help his family with the cleanup. He said powerful prairie windstorms are nothing new, but this storm was unlike anything he had experienced.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the first tornado that has actually touched down in the village since I moved here in the summer of 2000.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n
Michael Cope, left, helps his family clean up storm damage at the family property in Speers on Saturday, July 11, 2026, after a tornado tore through the village the previous evening.(Video Credit: Kenneth Cheung\/battlefordsNOW)\n <\/p>\n
Property owner Vic Whitfield spent Saturday assessing a storage building that had been torn apart by the storm.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got to take it apart and clean it all up,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve got to get a backhoe in here and a skid steer and clean up this mess.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whitfield said debris from the destroyed building had been blown into nearby trees and neighbouring properties, adding to the work still ahead.<\/p>\n
For Zipchen, the destruction also underscored how fortunate the community had been.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen there\u2019s this wrath of God that comes through and does all this kind of damage to nature and to everything, we just have to be thankful we\u2019re still here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody\u2019s helping each other. We\u2019re a community, we\u2019re gonna stand with each other and help each other out. That\u2019s what it\u2019s all about.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
Kenneth.Cheung@pattisonmeida.com <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Richard Zipchen, who works for the village as its water and sewer operator and maintenance worker, watched the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":795913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-795912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=795912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/795913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}