San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
FIONA WASHES HOUSES AWAY IN EASTERN CANADA
Storm brings rain, wind, 40-foot waves crashing into coast
A weather system that forecasters described as “a historic storm for eastern Canada” slammed the region’s coastal towns Saturday, washing away entire homes and blocking roads after making landfall in Nova Scotia before dawn.
Waves about 40 feet or higher hit the eastern shore of Nova Scotia and southwestern Newfoundland, forecasters said.
The storm covered playgrounds in water, ripped coastal houses from their foundations and knocked over large trees. At least two people were reported to have been swept into the ocean, one of whom was rescued and another who was missing, police said.
“This is a very powerful and dangerous storm,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who canceled a trip to Japan because of the storm, said at a news conference Saturday.
Trudeau said the Canadian government had approved Nova Scotia’s request for federal help and would deploy the Canadian Armed Forces to respond to the aftermath of the storm. The full picture of destruction was not clear late Saturday, but Trudeau said Fiona had caused “significant damage” and that “recovery will be a big effort.”
Fiona was among the strongest storms known to make landfall and hit Canada, said Dan Kottlowski, a senior meteorologist and lead hurricane forecaster at Accuweather.
“By the time it made landfall, Fiona was not technically a hurricane,” Kottlowski said. “But it still carried the same wind and damage and hit with the veracity of a strong Category 2 hurricane.”
In eastern Canada on Saturday, at least one coastal town was overwhelmed with flooding that destroyed buildings. More than 300,000 customers were without power in Nova Scotia as of 6 p.m. Saturday, according to Nova Scotia Power.
In Port aux Basques, a community of about 3,600 people on the southwestern tip of Newfoundland, several homes and buildings were washed away. The city was under a state of emergency Saturday.
René Roy, editor-in-chief of Wreckhouse Weekly, a local newspaper, said at least nine homes had been destroyed, including an apartment building that he estimated had eight to 10 units.
“This thing is an absolute howitzer,” Roy said. “This is as bad as anyone here has ever seen. It’s not just the wind we’re worrying on, that’s going to knock out power, that’s going to tear off shingles and so on. We’re used to that. But what we’re not used to is 30-, 40-, 50-foot waves coming up onto the roads, moving houses 60 feet or just completely vaporizing them.”
Roy said he lived in the east end of town, which was evacuated as the storm bore down Saturday, and was staying with a cousin on the west end, about 120 paces from the harbor. He said that he did not know if his house was still intact and that most people in town were cut off from one another because of power failures and flooded roadways.
Seamus O’regan Jr., Canada’s labor minister, said that he had spoken with Brian Button, the mayor of Port aux Basques in Newfoundland, and that Button had told him that at least 20 homes in the community had been destroyed. The mayor could not immediately be reached.
“He said there’s a devastation there that they just haven’t seen and couldn’t even imagine,” O’regan said.
The storm had been downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone from a Category 3 hurricane Friday. Post-tropical Cyclone Fiona was about 80 miles northwest of Port aux Basques and producing maximum sustained winds of 70 mph Saturday evening, according to the National Hurricane Center in the United States.
Fiona was forecast to bear down on Labrador and the Labrador Sea today before weakening further, the Canadian Hurricane Center said in an advisory.