Shelburne devastated by ice storm over weekend

April 3, 2025 · 0 Comments

Written By PAULA BROWN

LOCAL JOURNALISM INITIATIVE REPORTER

Residents of Shelburne and North Dufferin are starting the process of cleaning up and recovering from the aftermath of an ice storm that ravaged the community.

Over the past weekend, the community took a beating of freezing rain that saw hydro poles downed, trees toppled over, and thousands of residents and businesses left without power.

Michelle MacDonald, who lives on property on 4th Line in Melancthon, is one of the many residents in the community dealing with damage.

“It was insane. On the Saturday night, I started hearing the branches cracking and falling, and I knew at that point it was going to be bad,” said MacDonald. “It was terrifying because we know these trees are over 100 years old, and the nervousness of one hitting the house and upstairs bedrooms.”

MacDonald told the Free Press they experienced significant damage from the storm, including downed trees, a snapped hydro pole, pulled down hydro lines, fallen tree branches spread across their property and the back window of her van was blown out.

Giant Tiger, located at 226 First Ave. E in Shelburne, was one of many local grocers that lost power due to the ice storm. The store lost the majority of power around 9 p.m. on Saturday (March 29) evening and was able to restore power on Monday (March 31), after bringing in a generator.

Andrew Lewis, owner of the Shelburne Giant Tiger, said they were able to minimize the loss of perishable food products by bringing in a temperature-controlled trailer.

Lewis described the experience of going through the ice storm and the resulting power outage as “very chaotic.”

“We’ve had this happen to us before, but it’s still an issue when we come up against it. There’s a lot of lost sales, customers are inconvenienced and it’s stressful on the staff,” said Lewis. “We were all about saving the product and making sure that we minimize those losses as much as possible.”

Shelburne Fire Chief Dave Pratt told the Free Press that they started receiving calls for service around 8 p.m. on Saturday (March 29), and responded to around 30 calls for service during a roughly 36-hour period.

He added that the majority of the calls the department responded to were related to downed power lines, but also included carbon monoxide detection and fire alarms due to the power outages.

“I’m happy to report that while there was a lot of inconvenience, nothing significant happened during the time,” said Pratt.

Pratt is reminding residents to make sure generators are placed outside and don’t ventilate into the home to avoid carbon monoxide; to treat downed wires as live until it is confirmed they’re disconnected, and to proceed carefully when cutting trees and lumber debris.

“Safety is a priority,” he said.

The County of Dufferin continues to work towards cleaning up the damage left behind from the storm.