A couple who owns a Madoc area farm say not only is it nearly impossible to clean up the damage to their land from last year’s tornado but it’s caused a serious fire hazard.
Sandor Johnson and Erin Reitav say the tornado wiped out 100 acres of forest on their Ash Road farm and there has been no provincial or federal financial aid to help private landowners with cleanup.
Johnson says he’s already spent hundreds of hours cleaning up his land but has barely made a dent and fears what could happen if the thousands of dead trees and dry tinder catch fire.
“It’s just been laying there, drying out for nine months. The dry season’s coming. So this isn’t a matter of the government going, yeah we’ll allocate funds and then you got bureaucracy slowing things up, maybe we’ll tackle it next fall. No, no, no, no. No, we gotta get on this now because one lightning strike, one discarded cigarette and it all goes up in flames and then you’ve got real trouble.”
Compounding the issue is the fact their farm backs onto an area called Lightning Ridge.
“It’s notorious for lightning strikes. When storms come through we actually sit there and watch them hit the hill. It’s solid iron. The problem is that it backs to Quinte Conservation. It backs to the Upper Canada Mineral mining site. It backs to the Jarvis Lake Road residential area which is a lot of new homes.”
Forest remediation experts have told them it will cost approximately $800,000 just to clean up their farm – that’s about the same amount the province provided the township of Madoc in a funding package earlier this year.
In late March, the province announced a $5.5 million aid package for communities struck by the July 24, 2022 EF2 tornado.
Of that, Tweed is to receive $1.2 million, the Township of Madoc will be receiving just under $890,000 and a little more than $138,000 will go to the Municipality of Marmora and Lake.
Johnson, who also owns Potter Settlement Wines, says even if he had the time to dedicate solely to cleaning up, there are trees he can’t remove himself.
“They’re bent right over like a banana. And if you cut them, they’ll just explode and kick back and knock you into the next county so the reason why we talked to these remediation companies is so that they can come in with the proper equipment and clean this up.”
They’ve set up a gofundme page to raise money to help pay for the work on their property.
Johnson and Reitav say their fear of a massive forest fire is so strong that they’re going door-to-door to warn their neighbours about the fire hazard so that they can take precautions.
Johnson says if a forest fire is sparked, it has the potential to double every hour and with much of the affected land being remote, it is too difficult for local firefighters to reach and that it could take hours for water bombers to get to the scene.
The couple says Township of Madoc Mayor Loyde Blackburn and Councillor Amy Beaton recently visited their farm to see the damage and Hastings Lennox and Addington MP Shelby Kramp-Neuman has also agreed to visit in the near future.
Johnson says they are not the only ones affected and if the government isn’t helping, it may be time for the community to come together and fundraise to help people with their cleanups.
