Fiona grinds into coast, smashing property, power

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — Fiona washed houses into the sea, tore the roofs off others and knocked out power to the vast majority of two Canadian provinces Saturday as it made landfall as a big, powerful post-tropical cyclone.

Fiona transformed from a hurricane into a post-tropical storm late Friday, but it still had hurricane-strength winds and brought drenching rains and violent seas.

Ocean waves pounded the town of Channel-Port Aux Basques on the southern coast of Newfoundland, where entire structures were washed into the sea. Mayor Brian Button posted on social media that people were being evacuated to higher ground as winds knocked down power lines.

“I’m seeing homes in the ocean. I’m seeing rubble floating all over the place. It’s complete and utter destruction,” said René Roy, a resident of Channel-Port Aux Basques and chief editor at Wreckhouse Press. Roy said as many as a dozen houses and buildings have washed into the sea.

“It’s quite terrifying. I’m seeing coastal erosion. I see a house dangling out in the middle of air,” Roy said.

Jolene Garland, a spokeswoman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Newfoundland and Labrador, said a woman was safe after being “tossed into the water as her home collapsed” in the Channel-Port Aux Basques area. She said authorities received a report of another individual being swept out to sea but conditions were too dangerous to immediately confirm or respond.

Garland described extreme weather conditions along the southwest coast of Newfoundland that included “high winds, high waves, flooding and electrical fires.” Multiple structures have been destroyed by high seas, she said

“The damage is very extensive. We’ve seen homes, community centers, apartment buildings, roadways, bridges have all been impacted,” said Federal Minister of Emergency Preparedness Bill Blair. He also said there was extensive damage at the airport in Sydney, Nova Scotia, and at other airports including Halifax.

More than 415,000 Nova Scotia Power customers — about 80% of the province — were affected by outages Saturday morning. Over 82,000 customers in the province of Prince Edward Island, almost the entire province, were also without power, while NB Power in New Brunswick reported 44,329 were without electricity.

Fiona so far has been blamed for at least five deaths — two in Puerto Rico, two in the Dominican Republic and one in the French island of Guadeloupe.

Darren Calabrese / Canadian Press Georgina Scott surveys the damage on her street in Halifax, Nova Scotia, after Fiona, a powerful post-tropical cyclone, swept across the region with hurricane-strength winds.