You can forgive Michael Johns if he makes a beeline for his “go-bag” whenever a strong wind blows.
The political science prof has a knack for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, yet somehow manages to come out the other end unscathed.
Johns has managed to survive three near-misses with three separate tornadoes in his 47 years, the first being a violent F4 tornado that hit Barrie’s Allandale neighbourhood on May 31, 1985, leaving eight dead in the city.
Johns was 10 years old that spring and, like many young kids, was excited for a trip to check out the new McDonald's that had just opened in the city's south end. And even though it has been nearly four decades, Johns admits it's a day that has been hard to forget.
“The sky was a weird colour and it was really hot that day. We drove to the McDonald's and by the time we got there, the power was out so we had to go home,” he told BarrieToday, adding they made their way back to their home in the south end of the city through the Allandale area. “We got home and about five minutes later our neighbour from across the street came running over and said she’d gone through Allandale and thought a bomb had gone off.”
Johns and his family had just missed being caught up in the twister, having travelled nearly the exact same routes in the family station wagon merely a few minutes prior. He knew, even as a kid, just how lucky they’d been.
“We’d really just missed that one and if we’d looked behind us, we don’t know what we would have seen, because it was probably two or three minutes which we were ahead of it,” he said. “We got really lucky. We would have been pretty much sitting ducks because we were in our car. … We would have been in a lot of trouble and certainly a lot of people were that day.”
Tornado: Take Two
Sixteen years later, Johns was studying for his PhD at the University of Maryland, located less than 10 miles from Washington, D.C., when Johns found a little too close for comfort to a twister for the second time in his life.
“We had just gone through 9/11 and 13 days later I was in my office and I had the window open as it was a particularly hot day. I could hear a really loud noise and, like an idiot, I went and stuck my head out the window to see what it was," he said.
All he could see, he recalled, was a “big wall of black.”
“You couldn’t see a funnel or anything because it was too close,” said Johns, adding he immediately ran back inside and took cover in a small interior office. “It was the smallest space I could think of at that moment.”
As the twister made its way through, Johns recalls the building beginning to shake and some ceiling tiles breaking up and falling on his head. Once he was sure it was safe, Johns came out from where he’d been hiding and made his way out of the building. It didn’t take long for him to realize how bad things were.
“You could see it had gone through the campus. The lacrosse stadium was wrecked, there was debris everywhere and buildings had been really damaged.”
In the parking lot, Johns noticed his car had been slightly damaged by debris, but a vehicle a few spots down was not quite as lucky.
“The poor guy was standing there looking at his little pick p truck. A port-a-potty had gone airborne and taken out the front end of his car,” he said. “Where the engine block used to be was now a portable toilet.”
At that point, Johns said he began looking around to see what he could do to help.
“Emergency services had arrived on campus and just told us to get out. Unfortunately, the emergency services on site took some of the brunt of the tornado, and a lot of the first-responders were requiring rescuing," he said.
Two students were killed that day, he added, when the car they were in was picked up and thrown into a residence by the F-3 tornado.
“It was pretty traumatic, getting over the events of 9/11 and being in Washington, D.C., for that to then immediately have this tornado happen.”
Tornado: Take three
A decade after surviving the devastating tornado in Maryland, Johns found himself needing to once again try to find safety when an EF-2 tornado ripped through his south-end Barrie neighbourhood on July 15, 2021. Unlike the first two tornadoes he’d witnessed, the soon-to-be Canadore College professor admitted he didn’t feel like it was the kind of day you’d expect a tornado to occur.
“I was up in my office and the power went out. I came downstairs and I was standing in our front window — which was probably the worst place one could be — and talking with my wife. All of a sudden she got a weird look on her face,” he said.
She pointed out what was occurring behind him on the other side of the window.
“I turned around and the tree in our front yard was basically lying on its side — the top of the tree was touching the ground," he said.
The couple then noticed debris flying down their street, which was located one street over from where the twister hit hardest damage occurred.
“We were on Maple Crown and the tornado went up the street behind us," he said.
Despite the damage it caused, the 2021 Barrie twister was short-lived compared to the others he’d experienced. Johns admitted he and his wife barely had time to make sense of what was happening before it was over.
“As soon as I saw the tree and the debris… I yelled at my wife to grab one of our dogs and head to the basement and I would grab the other one. By the time we grabbed them and got from our front room to the basement door it was over,” he said. “We didn’t even really know what happened.”
Given how close they were to where the 2021 tornado hit the hardest, Johns told BarrieToday the damage to their home was minimal compared to what many of his neighbours experienced.
“Some of the siding on the front of our house had been ripped off… (and) we could see we’d lost shingles, The house behind us, a whole part of the roof was gone,” he said. “As soon as I turned the corner you could see there were houses that were missing their top floor, there were trees down everywhere, debris everywhere... and at that point i was like 'come on, this is enough'.”
Be prepared
Looking back on all three of his “close calls,” the 47-year-old admits he has sometimes wondered why he was so “lucky” to experience a once-in-a-lifetime thing — three times.
"It is pretty strange to think it’s becoming old hat dealing with tornadoes. It would be easy to say tornadoes hate me,” he joked. ‘Frankly, it’s simply a case of bad luck. Barrie is one of the areas where we see more tornadoes than other places and unfortunately we are experiencing climate change, (so) we are going to see more of these sorts of things, but it was just bad luck.”
In some ways, he actually counts himself lucky.
“When the third one happened, I could tell immediately what was going on and could get prepared. My wife and I have discussed emergency preparedness. Based on this and some of the weird things that have gone on in my life with disasters, we have ‘go bags’ (ready) for if we had to evacuate the house.”
While these types of natural disasters are unlikely, as Johns proves, they are not impossible.
“We spent a day getting all of the things we’d need if he had to evacuate our house. … If we’d been one street over or if the tornado had taken a slightly different path, we would have had to evacuate our house very quickly, so you need to be prepared for that.”
Johns definitely keeps a close eye on the forecast if he feels the weather changing.
“At this point, they’ve tried three times to get me and they’ve missed so I am developing a sense of confidence.”
All jokes aside, Johns said he definitely is more aware of the changing weather than some people may be.
“When you see on the Weather Channel about a tornado warning, you take it seriously because it can happen. You don’t have to hunker down, but there are certain things I do when there is a tornado warning. I don’t wear shoes in my house, but if there’s a tornado warning, I put shoes on in case something happens,” he said. “If you have to leave your house in a hurry, you should have shoes on.”
He wasn’t sure how he’d react the first time Mother Nature hit the city with her next big storm, but said when it happened, he found he wasn’t any more nervous than he normally would be.
“I wanted to see how I would react and (I) got through it,” he said. “A tornado is an event that you’re along for the ride with. You can be as prepared as possible… but tornadoes are to me one of the most random things. There’s an element of chance there, so I can be prepared, but I am not going to be fearful of it.”
