The town of Carlyle is continuing to clean up this week in the aftermath of a massive thunderstorm that slammed into the town on Thursday evening with strong winds, heavy rain, continuous lightning and even a tornado, which caused damages in many spots around the town.

"It's certainly the biggest storm I've ever seen here," said Carlyle Mayor Don Shirley. "There are trees that would be 50 years old or more and were snapped right off. It was really bad, and it was just a real miracle no one got hurt."

Environment Canada confirmed later that there was a tornado in the huge storm cell which developed over Weyburn and moved east over Stoughton and Carlyle, causing most of the damage in the latter town.

Besides trees and branches which were broken off all over town, several buildings sustained damages, including a greenhouse that was mostly demolished, rupturing a natural gas line. The smell of the gas was detected during the storm, and as fire officials weren't immediately sure where it came from, the decision was made to do a partial evacuation of the town to be on the safe side.

Fire Chief Trent Lee said he didn't want to have an incident such as recently occurred in Nipawin, so the members of the fire department went door to door and evacuated as many people from the area of the greenhouse as they could. Those who had no where to go were bussed to the skating rink at Arcola.

Chief Lee said this was the biggest storm he had seen in his 12 years in Carlyle.

"It was pretty intense at first. We had many reports that the power was out. Even trying to find a route to drive through the town was a challenge, and the rain was pounding down so hard you could barely see," he said.

When the report of a gas leak came in, his main priority at that point was to get people to safety. "You could smell it three blocks away, and at first we weren't sure where it came from. We could smell it on the west side of the propane plant, and there were fears there might've been a propane leak, so we took no chances and evacuated."

Of the efforts during and after the storm, Chief Lee said it was a community effort, as many people were out with chainsaws to cut trees apart so they could be cleared away.

In addition to Arcola volunteering use of their skating rink, their fire department was also on standby as there were reports of power lines arcing out.

In the aftermath, town employees worked through the weekend, and into this week there is property damage still being repaired and cleaned up.

As some streets were impassable due to the trees knocked down, Chief Lee said the first priority was getting the streets cleared on Thursday, and on Friday the remainder of the streets were cleared up, and his men also helped to clear out the alleyways of debris.

"SaskPower showed up and did a terrific job in getting the power back up. The crews from SaskEnergy were able to isolate the leak and seal it off quickly. I would say they went above and beyond the call of duty as they made sure there were no other leaks," said the fire chief.

Mayor Shirley said one aspect of the storm that was strange was how one property was hit while a neighbouring one wasn't. For example, he noted the trees in his yard were snapped off, yet his neighbour's trees were not hit.

Meantime, the cleanup was going well, he thought, with neighbours helping neighbours, particularly the elderly.

"It'll be a while yet for cleaning up. Some trees were damaged but you can't really see the damage," said the mayor. For buildings, he noted an airport hangar was totally destroyed, as was the greenhouse in town, and a new exercise gym had part of their roof torn off. Several businesses lost a part of their roof, and even the town office sustained some damage to the roof.

In addition, the power poles along the east side of Main Street were broken off, and SaskPower crews were busy fixing all those lines.

"We were very, very fortunate no one was hurt, but people did the right thing and got out of town. Neighbouring communities were also a really big help," said Mayor Shirley, noting towns like Oxbow, Arcola and the RM of Tecumseh all had people over to the town to lend a hand.