A violent storm swept across Montreal on Sunday, leaving a three-year-old girl in critical condition and sent six other people to hospital after an inflatable game was swept away by powerful wind gusts at Ouellette Park in LaSalle.

Around 4:30 p.m., powerful wind gusts lifted an inflatable play structure during a church gathering, sending it crashing into a nearby tent.

When paramedics arrived at the scene, they evaluated 11 people, sending six of them to hospital, including two children, and four adults.

At a press conference Monday, Montreal Mayor, Soraya Martinez Ferrada expressed her condolences to the families involved in the incident.

“My thoughts are with the family,” said Martinez Ferrada. “I mean, you go to an event that has to be festive, probably a birthday or something like that. Then you end up in the hospital. That’s not, I don’t think that was the objective of that day. And so my thoughts are with the family and with that little girl.”

“We have to be careful in terms of using those types of equipment under big winds like we had yesterday,” added Martinez Ferrada.  “It came really fast. And hopefully it’s a good advisement to people to be careful when they use this kind of equipment.”

Power outages

The storm also caused severe outages, majority of outages were reported in the Laurentians, where more than 6,250 households lost power. More than 1,300 customers were affected in Laval, while additional outages were reported in Outaouais and Montérégie.

Hydro-Québec crews were working to restore service, with fallen branches cited as the primary cause of the disruptions.

Authorities continue to investigate the incident as recovery efforts from the storm continue across the region.

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