For months, condo balcony glass exploded and concrete fell from the Gardiner Expressway without seriously injuring anyone.

Torontonians’ luck with raining debris came to an end Tuesday in gruesome fashion.

Madonna Broderick’s arm was nearly severed when a sheet of insulation flew down and shattered a pane of glass in the alcove where she was sheltering from a thunderstorm.

The glass sliced her arm from wrist to elbow, opening up a gash deep enough to see bone. Doctors used more than 50 stitches to close the wound.

Broderick, 55, is a diabetic and terrified she might lose her arm.

“I’m going to have nightmares about this,” she said, twice breaking into tears while she described the ordeal. “This much closer and it would have been my head.”

Jong Yoo owns the Bathurst and St. Clair dry-cleaning store whose window was shattered. He witnessed the grisly incident. “Suddenly, this thing came down like a projectile,” Yoo said. “Next thing you know she was screaming.”

Police are investigating and the family is meeting with a lawyer — they intend to sue, once the source of the debris is definitively established.

Yoo said that when he telephoned the construction company working on the condominium development across the street to complain about the flying insulation and his window, servicemen came to install a temporary pane that same day.

The company behind the 19-storey condo, 530 St. Clair West, says that “nobody is sure” where the insulation sheet came from. The company emailed a statement in response to inquiries from the Star.

“We are aware of yesterday’s unfortunate weather related incident, and we are co-operating fully with the resulting investigation,” wrote developer Larry Blankenstein on behalf of The Goldman Group and Lash Development Corporation.

“Until the results of the investigation into the cause of yesterday's incident are known to us, we are unable to provide further comment, other than to express our sympathies for the individual injured and our hope for a speedy recovery.”

Broderick’s daughter Terra Zammit discovered what had happened to her mother with a panicked phone call in which she could only make out the words “glass,” “ambulance,” and “arm nearly severed.”

“She heard the (paramedics) say you could see through to the bone,” Zammit says.

The family is reluctant to pursue legal action, but feel they have no choice — Broderick says that besides being traumatized, she is now temporarily housebound and unable to work.

“Hopefully it won’t happen to someone else,” said Zammit, who spent much of Wednesday speaking to police and lawyers.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Tonya Zammit, Broderick’s eldest daughter, is still incredulous:

“It could have been a child.”