SAIDIA ZALOSKI FOR THE DAILY PRESS

Jane Lemaire awoke to the sound of trees being ripped down, rooftops torn off and signs toppling over.

Lemaire was in Laos when a killer typhoon struck last week, leaving her and her family without electricty and in darkness.

The former Timmins resident is a doctor providing overseas training to medical staff in Laos.

She recounted her experience in an e-mail to her sister, Diane Bergeron, who lives in Timmins.

“We tried to sleep, but the wind picked up and we could not believe its intensity. Scary and scarier!” wrote Lemaire in her e-mail.

While out to get some candles and water, Lemaire noticed a “huge piece of c o r r u g a t ed metal used for roofing” come flying across the sky toward Som, her driver. The piece of metal caught in electrical wires overhead, dangling.

“My skin crawled wondering if the roofing material was going to let loose and hit us, or if it would break the wires and we would be fried,” wrote Lemaire.

Lemaire and her family were not sure, as storms go, how big this storm really was.

The guest-house manager explained to her that this was the biggest storm they’ve had in 20 years.

The family found themselves sheltered on the terrace of the guest house watching the storm.

“I have to admit that I ran inside three or four times when I was sure the wind was going to carry me into Mekong (a nearby city),” wrote Lemaire.

Once things settled down the following morning, Lemaire and her family packed their things and hopped on the ferry, taking them to the next closest city, Paske.

Unhurt and hungry, the family checked into their new room and enjoyed hot showers.

Lemaire is a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Calgary.

For the past eight years, Lemaire and her family have visited Laos to participate in the University of Calgary International Health Development project.

It’s a collaborative project with the Laos government aimed at improving the quality of training of doctors in that country.

Lemaire grew up in Timmins with her five sisters, including her older sister, Bergeron, and her parents, Wilfrid and Joan Lemaire.

Lemaire is still in the Philippines, but is expected to return home to Calgary by the middle of this month.