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Fiona’s fury batters eastern Canada
Post-tropical storm makes history as it lashes 3 provinces
TORONTO — Fiona washed houses into the sea, tore the roofs off others and knocked out power to the vast majority of two Canadian provinces and damaged a third as it made landfall before dawn Saturday as a post-tropical cyclone.
Fiona transformed into a post-tropical storm late Friday, but it still had hurricane-strength winds and brought drenching rains and huge waves. There was no confirmation of fatalities or injures.
Ocean waves pounded the town of Channel-Port Aux Basques on the southern coast of Newfoundland, where entire structures were washed into the sea.
“I’m seeing homes in the ocean. I’m seeing rubble floating all over the place. It’s complete and utter destruction,” said Rene Roy, a resident of the town, in a phone interview.
Jolene Garland, a spokeswoman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Newfoundland and Labrador, said a woman was safe and in “good health” after being “tossed into the water as her home collapsed” in the Channel-Port Aux Basques area.
Garland said an individual who might have been swept away was still reported as missing and that high winds were preventing an aerial search.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said the town of 4,000 people was in a state of emergency as authorities dealt with multiple electrical fires and residential flooding.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau canceled his trip to Japan for the funeral for assassinated former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Trudeau said the federal government would deploy the Canadian Armed Forces to assist.
“We are seeing devastating images coming out of Port Aux Basques. PEI (Prince Edward Island) has experienced storm damage like they’ve never seen. Cape Breton is being hit hard, too,” Trudeau said.
Halifax Mayor Mike Savage said the roof of an apartment building collapsed and they moved 100 people to a evacuation center. He said no one was seriously hurt or killed.
Provincial officials said there are other apartment buildings that are also significantly damaged. Halifax has about 160 people displaced from two apartments, officials said.
More than 415,000 Nova Scotia Power customers — about 80% of the province of almost 1 million — were affected by outages Saturday morning. Over 82,000 customers in the province of Prince Edward Island, about 95%, were also without power, while NB Power in New Brunswick reported 44,329 were without electricity.
The Canadian Hurricane Center tweeted early Saturday that Fiona had the lowest pressure ever recorded for a storm making landfall in Canada.
“We’re getting more severe storms more frequently,” Trudeau said.
Trudeau said more resilient infrastructure is needed to be able withstand extreme weather events, saying a one-in-a-100-year storm might start to hit every few years because of climate change.
A state of local emergency was also declared by the mayor and council of the Cape Breton Regional
Municipality.
“There are homes that have been significantly damaged due to downed trees, big old trees falling down and causing significant damage. We’re also seeing houses that their roofs have completely torn off, windows breaking in. There is a huge amount of debris in the roadways,” said Amanda McDougall, mayor of Cape Breton Regional Municipality.
Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston said roads were washed out, including his own, and said an “incredible” amount of trees were down.
“It is pretty devastating. The sad reality is the people who need information are unable to hear it. Their phones are not working, they don’t have power or access to the internet,” Houston said.
Peter Gregg, president and CEO of Nova Scotia Power, said about 380,000 customers remain without power as of Saturday afternoon.
Prince Edward Island Premier Dennis King said they had no reports of any significant injures or deaths.
But he said few communities were spared damage, with the devastation looking to be beyond anything they had seen previously in the province. He said over 95% of islanders remained without power.
Federal Minister of Emergency Preparedness Bill Blair said there was very extensive damage at the airport in Sydney, Nova Scotia.
Fiona had weakened to tropical storm strength late Saturday afternoon as it moved across the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
The U.S. hurricane center said Fiona had maximum sustained winds of 70 mph. It was centered about 80 miles northwest of Port Aux Basques and moving northeast at 8 mph.
Tropical storm-force winds extended outward up to 550 miles.
Hurricanes in Canada are somewhat rare, in part because once the storms reach colder waters, they lose their main source of energy. But post-tropical cyclones still can have hurricane-strength winds.
Fiona has been blamed for at least five deaths — two in Puerto Rico, two in the Dominican Republic and one on the French island of Guadeloupe.