Crucial New Brunswick highway reopens
Fredericton water levels below flood stage
New Brunswick residents have begun the long, messy business of cleaning up sodden homes and cottages – including one runaway cottage left bobbing in lake waters after floating seven kilometres away from its perch.
The Trans-canada Highway between Fredericton and Moncton reopened just before noon Friday after being shut for a week, but it is reduced to one lane in each direction in one portion.
“We’ve only just begun moving the conversation from emergency to recovery,” Geoffrey Downey, spokesman for the Emergency Measures Organization, said Friday.
The federal response comes as flood waters continued their longawaited retreat, two weeks after they swept through Fredericton and then went on to swamp several communities along the swollen Saint John River.
Federal data indicate water levels in Fredericton receded to about 6.4 metres above sea level early Friday, putting the city below the flood stage. Levels have also gone down to about 4.8 metres in Saint John, which remains above flood stage. Downey said it’s expected to drop to below flood level by Sunday.
The expansive cleanup could be most daunting in the Grand Lake area outside Jemseg, where many cottages either collapsed or were relocated by surging waters and potent winds.
Delberta Flood, who lives in the lake’s Youngs Cove, said she was stunned to find a whole building resting just down the shore from her home, which was not affected by the flood.
She was out walking last weekend when she spotted something quite large a distance from her home.
“I got as close as I could and it was a house or a camp - a oneand-a-half storey camp sitting upright, still floating but caught up in a tree,” she said with a chuckle.
“It had curtains in the windows and just looked like it was supposed to be there!”
Flood took photos of the structure, posted them to a Grand Lake Facebook page with the message that it has washed up on her shore and quickly heard from the owner, who asked where it was.
She told him and asked where it had come from, expecting it was just around the corner.
“He said it came from Princess Park and that is seven kilometres across the lake, so we were really surprised it floated that far and stayed upright and didn’t break apart,” she said, adding that the slightly tilted cottage no longer has a door and is filling with water.
Flood said all matter of items have floated past her home in recent days, including a submerged sailboat detectable by its mast, lots of decks, sets of stairs, a kayak, two life-jackets and a soc- cer ball.
The cottage, however, stands out.
“We saw some pretty weird things float by, but that’s the weirdest,” she said.
Downey said the province doesn’t yet have a damage estimate, but that about 1,200 calls have been to a line for disaster assistance financial help. About 60 roads remained closed and Darlings Island was still cut off.
“Once the province and municipalities can have a look at what they need to do to get everything back to pre- flood conditions, then we’ll certainly have an idea of what the price tag will be,” he said.