The former site of the Canyon City Public Works storage shed stands open to the elements on Dec. 4, 2024.

CANYON CITY — The mess has been cleaned up. Next on the to-do list is rebuilding.

A large equipment storage shed used by Canyon City Public Works was badly damaged in a storm that swept through the area on Nov. 19-20, with winds as high as 75 mph recorded in Grant County.

Powerful gusts lifted the corrugated metal roof off the open-sided building, twisting it out of shape and dropping it down on top of a wildland fire engine, a snowplow and a road grader owned by the city.

An insurance adjuster confirmed what city officials already knew: “It’s absolutely a total loss,” Mayor Steve Fischer said of the building, located along Canyon Creek near the south end of Humbolt Street.

Last Wednesday, Dec. 4, a crew from Tidewater Contractors dismantled the metal roof and wooden frame of the 36-by-150-foot building and stacked the components in two tidy heaps. The city vehicles that had been pinned under the roof have been moved to another location.

Fischer said the $318,000 insurance policy on the structure should be enough to cover the costs of rebuilding, but it’s not yet clear where the new structure will go.

“We’re trying to find out if we’re going to be able to build back in the same location, because a portion of that is in the floodplain,” he said.

“Hopefully this will all be worked out by spring.”

The three city-owned vehicles that were stored in the shed when the wild winds struck all sustained some degree of damage, but it could have been much worse, the mayor said.

The light bar on top of the wildland fire engine was damaged, along with a toolbox mounted on the rig. A couple of lights on the snowplow were banged up, and the road grader suffered a bent exhaust pipe.

“I don’t even know if we’re going to end up claiming any of that,” Fischer said. “If that’s all the damage we got, that’s pretty good.”

The big concern now is what will happen to the big pile of gravel used for sanding roads that was previously protected from rain and snow under the shed’s roof.

“That doesn’t fare well when it gets precipitation on it and freezes,” Fischer said.