Rows of houses being smashed to nothing, as if they were made of popsicle sticks. Roofs of apartment buildings peeling off like the tops of tuna cans.



Power transmission towers bending in half, and the broken tops of wooden utility poles hovering ominously in mid-air, held up only by sparking power lines.

And the image of a man holding desperately onto his four-year-old daughter as winds threaten to lift her away into the dark grey void above them, where the roof had been just seconds ago.

A video recap of the disaster and the early recovery efforts in the Ottawa and Gatineau area. (CBC News)

It took only minutes for three tornadoes to upend tens thousands of lives in and around Ottawa and Gatineau, Que., just across the river from the capital, in the late afternoon and early evening of Friday, Sept. 21.

That same day, three other twisters wound their way through the woods of rural western Quebec, north of Gatineau.

For everyone affected — either directly by the winds or by the massive power outages that followed — the dramatic storms passed in seconds.

But the recovery and rebuilding effort will take days, weeks, months — and for some, longer still.