Ravaged by freak windstorm
Growers contemplate losses caused by big blow that flattened fruit trees andmade summer wildfires worse. By Judie Steeves
A
fter he saw a row of his 12-15- year-old high-density apple trees ripped out of the ground beside him in gale-force winds Aug. 13, Tony Antunes says he had to go into the basement of his house to get away from the carnage.
“It was devastating,” he recalls. “We’ve had windstorms before, but they didn’t last for long. This was pretty extreme, and it went on all night.”
All his life Antunes has been growing apples, and he’s never seen the like of this summer’s storm—the same one that in seconds took a spark and blew it into a wild firestorm that was still burning in the Oliver area at the end of August. Of the 15,000 or so trees he has on his nine acres of apples, 752 apple trees in the peak of their production, were ripped out of the ground, along with a post and wire system he figured was “the ultimate anchor system,” when he put it in. “They just snapped like toothpicks.”
Antunes has owned this orchard south of Oliver for the past 20 years and says he’s just a small grower compared to some of his neighbours who were also hit by the storm. “Some of their orchards look like a plane landed in the middle of it,” he says.
Not only did he lose trees, along with their production of fruit for this year, but the rest of his crop has also been damaged. He sent crews in to pick the Galas, which looked fine from the ground, but his pickers found only the outside of each fruit was fine. The side of most fruits closest to the tree were all scuffed and bruised from contact with the tree during the storm.
He’s afraid to try and estimate what his losses might be, but figures
10
High-density apple planting uprooted by August wind near Oliver.
DENISE MACDONALD
more than half the remaining crop is bruised. As far as the trees are concerned, five rows of downed trees now have to be disentangled from the structure; clips on each have to be removed; then the land cleared so new infrastructure can go in. Then new trees will have to be bought and planted. After that, it will be five to seven years before much of a crop will be harvested from them. Antunes ships to Fairview Orchards in Oliver and has been encouraged to pick and ship anyway, because there are concerns about crop losses in the area. However, he admits he had considered just abandoning the crop. Of more concern in the long-term is the fact he’s been told he won’t receive anything from crop insurance for his losses, because not a high enough percentage of his trees were lost to exceed his deductible. He’s just one in an isolated group of growers who had to contend not only with wildfires threatening them on all sides this August, but this sudden extreme windstorm that tore
British Columbia FRUIT GROWER • Fall 2015
apples from the trees, threw them on the ground, and ripped dozens of whole trees out by the roots. Chamkaur Singh Gill was another of those affected, and says when he went out around 5:30 on Fri., Aug. 13, he found “everything broken down,” from just a few minutes of extreme winds.
About eight rows of young apple trees, complete with posts and wires, lay on the ground with their roots exposed and fruit littered the orchard floor. What was left on the trees was bruised from being knocked about. “It’s a total loss of my crop,” he says. As well, he estimates 50 to 60 trees have been ripped out of the ground by the fierce winds. The best remaining fruit is only marketable for juice, he figures. “It’s very hard for us. We have big mortgage payments we have to make to the bank every year,” he adds. The Gills have a total of 15 or 16 acres, with 6.5 acres in apples. Although some peaches had already been picked, he said the remaining crop that was still on the trees when
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24