June 2016 – MYSTERY HUM– The
volume got cranked up on the Windsor Hum Sunday night. A Facebook page
for hum haters and rumble recorders exploded as person after person said
the pulses, pounding and vibrations were some of the worst in years.
“It was disastrous last night,” west-end dweller Mike Provost said
Monday. “It’s past unbelievable. I have never heard it like that in six
years that I’ve been recording. Never have I ever heard it like that.”
Resident devoted thousands of hours to
stopping mysterious ‘Windsor Hum’ that is loud ‘enough to drive you
insane. Provost, a retiree whose back yard on Hillcrest Boulevard faces
towards Zug Island, stressed the hum is not back. It’s always there and
becomes more persistent and annoying at times, he said. Provost
described it as a thunderous roar or rolling thunder that he said was
reported to be felt or heard 17 kilometres away in McGregor, Amherstburg
and River Canard Sunday night.
For years residents in west Windsor and
nearby parts of Essex County have been complaining about a mysterious
hum like a refrigerator truck running. In March there were more
complaints. In 2014, a federal government study linked the hum to U.S.
Steel Corp. operations on Zug Island but an exact cause couldn’t be
pinpointed when the Department of Foreign Affairs and International
Trade said it couldn’t access the U.S. site. The guess was furnace
blasts. Provost worries about health impacts from the industrial noise.
“They know who they are. I’m sure of that,” Provost said. “Figure out a
way to muffle the noise.”
He said people started posting on
Facebook at the Windsor/Essex County Hum page at 9:20 p.m. Sunday and
then there was another flurry of posts Monday morning between 5:45 a.m.
and 10 a.m. He’s been recording the hum continually for years and
changes his tape every 24 hours, he said. He’s hoping all the
information will help show politicians what the residents put up with
and pinpoint a cause.
Windsor drummer Jeff Burrows, who lives
in south Windsor, said he heard the long, drawn-out, low frequency hum
for the first time in more than a year at 4 a.m. Monday. It woke him up.
“It’s like four in the morning and I’m like uh, seriously.” He turned
to Twitter to post that the hum was back. Sonya Skillings, who was the
first one to take the mysterious hum to the press, said she noticed the
hum more this morning as she got her kids ready for school. She said it
was one of the worst rumblings in the last six years. “It’s
aggravating.”
She doesn’t know if she’s hearing the
hum or feeling it as it shakes her west Windsor home. She’d like to know
exactly what it is and if something could be done to confine it, she
said. Windsor West MP Brian Masse’s office usually hears about it when
the hum is bothersome. Masse who is in Ottawa wasn’t available Monday
afternoon but a message was left at the Windsor office about the number
of calls or emails received recently on the hum. –National Post
