Navan farmer loses lifetime of work during Ottawa storm
Posted May 25, 2022 03:12:00 PM.
A Navan farmer is describing the experience of watching his life's work fall around him during the storm that swept through Ottawa over the Victoria Day long weekend.
The rural area of Navan was particularly hard hit by the storm and Wyatt McWilliams says he was about 10 seconds from entering his barn with a horse when the structure came crashing down, along with a number of sheds on his property.
“Everything's tossed in about five minutes,” McWilliams told The Sam Laprade Show on Tuesday, May 24. “A lifetime of building sheds and barns and she's all gone. Everything we've built up over the years has to be rebuilt and I'm too young to retire.”
However, McWilliams says he is thankful no humans or livestock were injured and that he knows how lucky that is when considering the number of trees that came down in his area.
McWilliams is extending a huge thank you to everyone who has supported his family in the aftermath, saying he received one phone call after another as people showed up to help out.
“I can't thank everybody enough,” he says.”It's pretty emotional whenever you have so many phone calls. I was going from one beep to the next beep.”
McWilliams also says anyone looking to help a farmer could do so by walking through their fields and helping pick up loose debris.
Listen to the fill interview with Wyatt McWilliams below:
