An intense windstorm Tuesday evening damaged quite a few roofs in Steinbach and elsewhere in southern Manitoba. The storm blew through around the supper hour with peak wind gusts of more than 70 kilometres per hour.

Peter Reimer, a partner at Racka Roofing in Steinbach, says they've had dozens of calls from people with missing shingles. With rain in the forecast late this week, he says they are working quickly to put temporary protection in place.

"We work awfully hard to get those situations covered up as fast as possible. I know we had guys out there until dark last night in southern Steinbach, covering up a bunch of roofs. We have lots of guys available and we always try to cover them as fast as we can, a temporary cover-up, and then we work with the owners to see if we can do permanent repairs or give the best advice."

Reimer says there are special products they use for temporary patching.

"In today's industry, we use a lot of synthetic underlayments which are better than tar paper. It's a durable product that is waterproof. That's the easiest solution to use for bigger patches. If it's smaller patches, we can just use leftover shingles that we quickly put into place to shed water."

Over at Harvest Insurance, Orville Giesbrecht says they have had only a few claims as of Wednesday morning but adds it's still early and they will have a better idea by Thursday. He notes they have had calls about damage to shingles as well as things like patio furniture and trampolines.