Wild windstorm sends Vancouver's nerves on edge

A powerful windstorm swept across Metro Vancouver in west Canada on Saturday, with gusts of up to 90 km an hour toppling large trees, closing city parks and knocking out power for more than 300,000 homes.

Vancouver's park authorities closed Stanley Park over safety fears, and were asking people to leave as quickly as possible. Several municipal governments warned people to stay home.

There have been reports of blown-down trees smashing homes and cars and hitting at least one pedestrian in the area, where trees are extremely parched after going through three months of hot, dry weather.

Environment Canada issued a wind warning for Metro Vancouver on Saturday morning, saying a rapidly intensifying storm could cause damage, toss loose objects or cause tree branches to break.

In Vancouver's Trout Lake Park, a crowd of pagans had gathered here at a festival to celebrate nature. Their plans changed when the winds started to toss their tents and sections of trees began to fall around them. The scene became very dangerous.

Jason Lott, one of the pagans in the park, told Xinhua that they planned to celebrate Pagan Festival but had to give up because of the strong wind.

"My wife and I were selling her novel books, and we suddenly got this big, giant windstorm right in the middle of it," he said.

It did not take long for organizers to realize that nature was not going to cooperate with their festival.

"As soon as that fell my wife and I was like, yep, it's time to go. We're right up here against the trees. We didn't want to stick around much longer," Lott added.

Authorities urged Metro Vancouver residents to stay inside, as reports came in of large trees fallen across major roads. Streetlights and public buses and trains in some areas also failed in the storm.

News reports from the neighboring City of Surrey said a falling tree struck a 40-year-old woman, sending her to hospital with life-threatening injuries.

Ed Johnston, Pagan Pride Festival organizer, said Mother Nature has appeared quite angry this year amid a record drought for the region. They hoped their Pagan Pride Festival would help to attract some rain, but they were feeling the irony.

"We were kind of joking about how we did all this work and it rained on our special day, and then now it's just gone insane and a lot of people are really shaken up by it," Johnston said.