Around 2:40 pm on Thursday, a tornado touched down in Barrie, Ontario causing catastrophic damage to a neighbourhood, and injuring several residents.

Tornados are very uncommon in Ontario but today’s twister lasted about 10-15 minutes in the Prince William Way and Mapleview Drive area. Many homes are severely damaged, there are uprooted trees, and flipped over cars.

The resident of the area says it looks like a warzone as some houses have unbelievable amounts of damage. Simcoe police say they are surveillance the area, going door to door to ask if residents are okay and what damages they have.

So far Simcoe paramedics have confirmed that 8 people are injured from the twister and about 4 have severe injuries, but cannot disclose what they are at the moment. Right now the important part is to check up on residents, their homes and Simcoe police state, “if you are not from the area please refrain from going, it is for the safety of the residents and yourselves.”

A member of the Barrie police says from photos and videos you can see that many homes are ‘severely’ damaged, some even partially collapsed.

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Environment Canada only issued the tornado warning just minutes before it touched down, stating to residents of Innisfil, New Tecumseth, Orillia, Barrie, Collingwood and Hillsdale to “take cover immediately.” A meteorologist from Environment Canada stated, “The heat and humidity and the low levels are kind of the building blocks, the fuel for the storms to form and then with a trigger like a cold front, lifting that air mass into the air and making it produce as much a storm as it can that that’s what we’re seeing today with these storms,”

As of right now, around 3,800 residents are out of power completely, and many have their homes damaged to a severe extent. The tornado came with no warning except for a severe thunderstorm and now lead to injured residents and completely damaged homes.