Queen City Ribfest hit hard by severe storm, postponed until Saturday

It should have been a fun Friday morning of preparations, but the weather has put a big damper on the Queen City Ribfest.

Instead of cooking meat, vendors were in the early stages of insurance claims after Thursday night’s severe thunderstorm caused heavy damage to their food trucks.

Damage at the site of Queen City Ribfest on July 23, 2021. (Dominick Lucyk/980 CJME)

“We were just shocked.”

That’s according to Nicole Diavolitsis with Boss Hogs BBQ.

Their truck was flipped by the storm and reduced to a mess of metal and banners.

“You don’t imagine that something like this would happen. Especially after COVID, you think you’re going to get back to business after it’s been challenging … No one can control stuff like this, but you just never imagine that it would happen,” she said.

Rob Reinhardt is the Ribfest organizer. He described what it was like when the storm hit.

“It came in very fast. We were scrambling, trying to secure our tents. Within minutes, these rigs were wobbling and our banners were up in the air. It was pretty scary, so we cleared out our staff, made sure everyone was off to the side safely, and fortunately, nobody was hurt,” he said.

According to Reinhardt, each one of the damaged food trucks is worth about $200,000. Two of them were heavily damaged, while the third wasn’t hit quite as badly.

“It’s a terrible situation for sure, but I’ve never been a guy that gets upset about stuff I can’t control. So, we’ll clean up (and) we’re grateful that everybody’s safe,” he said.

Ribfest was supposed to kick off Friday night. Instead, it has been postponed until the weekend. It will run from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday and 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Sunday.