A huge Ice wave from a nearby lake hit a small lakeside community, Manitoba, Canada, destroying and damaging many homes Friday, May 10.
Strong winds blowing at the rate of 80 Km/h drove large chunks of ice from the lake Dauphin towards the shore and onto the land making it look like a giant ice tsunami. According to CBC Canada, while a total of 27 homes have been damaged, 14 of them have completely been uprooted.
Residents had only a few minutes to flee. Many of them were shocked to see such a large wall of ice creeping forward at that pace. Homeowners are devastated by their loss as many of them don't have insurance coverage. All the residents are hoping for a disaster relief.
Check out a video below:
An emergency was immediately declared in the area. However, no person was injured. The ice tsunami follows another major disaster, a flood, that wrecked the community in 2011.
"Most (families) were just back to the stage where they were back living in their homes again. And now this has happened. So they're pretty devastated right now," Clayton Watts, a local official of Manitoba, said to the Winnipeg Free Press.
Clean-up efforts have already started. Residents were out with shovels, bulldozers and wheelbarrows to clear out the ice from the surviving and damaged homes that now look like "ice-boxes", reports Daily Mail.
The changing climatic conditions due to global warming are a constant cause of concern. More recently, a study claimed that carbon dioxide levels have reached alarming levels that could result in a catastrophic temperature rise all across the globe.
A feature on The Guardian reads:
"There are likely to be severe physical consequences for the planet. Rising temperatures will shrink polar ice caps - the Arctic's is now at its lowest since records began - and so reduce the amount of solar heat they reflect back into space. Similarly, thawing of the permafrost lands of Alaska, Canada and Russia could release even more greenhouse gases, including methane, and further intensify global warming."
