Newfoundlanders assessing damage after fierce storm
Residents in Newfoundland and Labrador are taking stock of the damage caused by this Saturday’s fearsome windstorm.
Utility crews worked through overnight to restore power to the tens of thousands of customers who were left without electricity.
Newfoundland Power tweeted that 20,000 customers were still without power Sunday morning, down from 70,000 Saturday night. The utility said it hopes to get most residents back on the grid by Sunday evening, but isolated outages could last into Monday.
St. John’s resident Phonse Fagan said he slept fully clothed under six blankets to stay warm after the heat and lights went
out at his house Saturday at about noon. A shrieking gale had been picking up speed for
the previous two hours when the power failed, he said as he sat Sunday reading in a warming centre at St. John’s City Hall.
“I was doing a few chores around the house and I just noticed the sound was very unusual,” he said. “The sound of the wind was just roaring through the whole neighbourhood,” he said.
Fagan said there was flying debris from split trees.
“I’ve been talking to people who said siding was blown off their houses,” he added
Around St. John’s, damage was evident Sunday as a lengthy cleanup began. Slate tiles from a downtown church were blown into an alley 100 metres away, roofs were partly off several houses and buildings and a home in nearby Torbay had its top floor blown off.
Salvation Army Maj. John Goulding helped co-ordinate warming centres in St. John’s and Mount Pearl for dozens of people who needed refuge.
“It was very powerful,” he said of the storm that knocked out hydro to his house in Mount Pearl for several hours.
Goulding said the damage may not be on par with Hurricane Igor in September 2010, which brought torrents of rain over much of southeastern Newfoundland. Still, he said, it was a reminder of nature’s power.
“I was out briefly yesterday doing some personal chores and I had great difficulty standing up,” he said of trying to walk in the blasts of wind. “It’s something you really had to experience to imagine what was happening.”
A meteorologist with Environment Canada said Sunday that the worst of the hurricaneforce gusts, which broke records in some areas, has passed.