Front Burner - Fiona’s path of destruction

Episode Date: September 26, 2022

After Hurricane Fiona lashed the Caribbean last week, it landed in Canso, N.S., Saturday morning as a post-tropical storm. It then began its path of destruction through Atlantic Canada. While the level of devastation in Canada doesn't compared to places like Puerto Rico, Fiona has still caused significant damage throughout parts of the Maritimes. It’s torn through homes, flooded streets, toppled power lines and caused at least one death. Today, Halifax-based CBC reporter Brett Ruskin joins us to talk about Fiona’s devastation in Atlantic Canada, and how people are coping.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Bigger, stronger, and a potentially historic storm, parts of Atlantic Canada are now under hurricane warnings as Fiona churns closer. After Hurricane Fiona lashed the Caribbean last week, on Saturday morning it landed in Kanso, Nova Scotia as a post-tropical storm and began its path of destruction through Atlantic Canada. Trees snapped like twigs, uprooted from the ground.

Hurricane Fiona was every bit as fierce as predicted. Houses were washed into the sea and hundreds of thousands of people are left without power as winds up to 100 miles per hour bring down power lines. Houses were washed into the sea and hundreds of thousands of people are left without power as winds up to 100 miles per hour bring down power lines. Since six o'clock this morning, all I've seen is destruction. All I've seen is damage, homes, you know, pulverized. You know, I've seen boats in playgrounds. And while in Canada the level of devastation hasn't compared to places like Puerto Rico,

it's still caused significant damage throughout the Maritimes, tearing through homes, flooding streets, toppling power lines, and it's believed to have caused at least one death. So today I'm speaking to my Halifax colleague, CBC reporter Brett Ruskin, about Fiona's devastation in eastern Canada and how people are coping. Brett, hi. Thank you so much for making the time today. Of course. Thanks for having me. So let's start by talking about the physical storm itself.

Can you just take me through a play-by-play of where Fiona has gone and what that's looked like as the storm has made its way across Atlanta, Canada? Sure. Well, yeah. I mean, storms like these, hurricanes, they start in the south, kind of gather momentum, often do lots of damage down in the Caribbean. south, kind of gather momentum, often do lots of damage down in the Caribbean. Hurricane Fiona has already shown its devastating strength, lashing Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Turks and Caicos, killing at least eight people, leaving more than a million in the dark. And then they start making that track northwards. So it made landfall near a town of Canso. It's called Canso. And it kind of, if you know kind of the geography of the East Coast, Nova Scotia specifically, the path sent it right between mainland Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island. And that path went along the side of Prince Edward Island and then up along the side of Newfoundland as well.

Island and then up along the side of Newfoundland as well. So it's kind of, unfortunately, giving a taste of Fiona to all these different provinces as it made its way across Atlantic Canada and is continuing on across Eastern Canada as well. And I know that we're going to get into the human impacts of this and the details a bit more. But broadly, like where was the worst destruction? I suppose it depends on what you think of as worst. I mean, sometimes when a storm approaches, we're told, oh, it's going to dump a bunch of rain, there's going to be flooding. Or, oh, it's going to be really strong winds, it's going to knock down some trees. Or the storm surge is going to be really high and there's going to be lots of waves and coastal erosion, coastal flooding. The thing about this storm is that it had all of that.

It had the lowest barometric pressure ever registered on land in Canada. And basically, low barometric pressure means bad weather for the most part. And so record-breaking in that sense. And just windy lots of places, rainy in lots of places. Some of the hardest hit areas tended to be close to the track, but also where you were on either side of the track kind of dictates what kinds of weather you're going to get. And I'm not a meteorologist by any stretch of the imagination, but from what I've heard meteorologists talk about here at CBC and

just kind of researching and talking about what the different impacts of the storm are on the right side of the track of the storm track, typically you get more wind. On the left side of the track, typically you get more rain. And you might think, well, this is a storm's a storm. It's a spinning hurricane heading towards land. It's going to have the same windy, rainy impact everywhere, isn't it? Not quite. And so let me explain, if we have time, we do.

If we have time to explain. We do, yeah. And this is really interesting. So, yeah, because I would assume that the first place a big storm like this makes landfall is probably going to be the worst. And as it moves across the land and knocks into trees and mountains and houses, it just kind of slowed down. But that's actually not the case. That's what you're saying. I mean, it typically, when it makes landfall, it's coming off the ocean, has lots of power,

lots of energy to it. So that's certainly a spot to watch, a high energy spot, definitely. But again, to the right of the track is usually the windiest spot. Because if you picture a hurricane on the map, the big white spinning arm in the middle of the ocean that you see, and so it's spinning counterclockwise, and the storm is moving up the coast towards the land. And so the parts of that spinning circle that moves the wind, when it moves in the same direction as the storm is going, so as it's spinning around, on the right-hand side, that wind is spinning with and in the same direction that the storm is moving. So the speed of the storm, the speed of the wind gets added together.

speed of the storm, the speed of the wind gets added together. And that's why it's so much more damaging on the right side of the storm track. Now, on the opposite sense, when that wind whips around the opposite direction, so the storm's going towards land, but that wind on the left-hand side is coming back around away from land. So that's why you get a little bit less wind on the left-hand side and typically more rain on that side. So if we take a look at some of the impacts, we saw lots of wind up in Cape Breton. Fiona struck eastern Nova Scotia in the middle of the night. It's hurricane-force winds hitting up to 160 kilometers per hour.

Cape Breton Regional Municipality declared a state of emergency. We saw lots of storm surges, lots of flooding on the opposite side of the storm track over on Prince Edward Island. Fiona announced itself in Prince Edward Island with high winds and intense rains. Felt trees and power lines blocked streets across Charlottetown. Fences and patios were smashed. Debris has blown off buildings and heavy rain has caused localized flooding. So kind of an example of the differing impacts that this storm has had so far.

Atlantic Canadians are like, of course, very well acquainted with major storms. But like, how does the severity of this one compare to other major storms we've seen in the past? So if we take a look back, people always remember Hurricane Juan. Halifax Information Radio is on a hurricane watch. All regular features on this service have been canceled until this weather watch ends. Hurricane Juan had sustained winds of 158 kilometers an hour. In some places, the storm surge was nearly two meters high. Hurricane Juan, back in 2003, had just a huge impact specifically on Halifax.

So direct hit just really leveled a lot of the vegetation in Halifax. That was a very powerful, quick, relatively small storm. This storm that hit us, Fiona, was that same power, but larger. So it was about the size of Hurricane Dorian or post-tropical storm Dorian. That was the storm that hit us most recently, 2019. So that's when that storm hit. It was a large storm. At the peak, more than 400,000 customers were without electricity, more than any other storm in this province's history, according to Nova Scotia Power. Less powerful than one. And so this storm that just hit us was a big one, was a powerful one.

And it was slow as well. It slowed down once it made landfall. And that basically meant that these strong winds and all this power just stuck in certain places. It was windy for six, seven hours, depending on where you were. So buildings, vegetation, people had to cope with all this power, all this wind energy and storm surge energy and rain energy for a long time. So that's why this was a bad storm. I want to hone in with you on some of the places that have been hit the hardest. So

starting with one of those places, I guess would have gotten these heavy winds on the right side of that storm, like you were talking about, Port-au-Basque in southwestern Newfoundland, which seems to have borne the worst of this storm. And can you paint a picture for me of what the destruction looked like there? Probably some of the most tragic and dramatic stories are coming

out of this this small community right on the the southwestern coast of Newfoundland rather and and stories about people being swept out to sea. At the height of the storm this morning high waves swamped houses that collapsed into the ocean near the town of Channel Portabasque. swamped houses that collapsed into the ocean near the town of Channel Port-au-Basque. Two women were swept away by the waves. One was rescued. The other was reported missing. The rescue attempts have now changed over to recovery attempts. Right now we have an active search with ground search and rescue. You can imagine the debris that's along the coastline and what they're having to deal with. That part has really taken its toll on everyone in the community. Both of these instances, as far as we know from what has been reported from witnesses have seen,

is that they were in the basement of their homes right along the coast and water and waves were just kind of broiling. along the coast and water and waves were just kind of broiling. So if you picture if you're boiling water for pasta and just how rough and unpredictable and angry that water appears to be, it was like that magnified many times over in the ocean and it's swelling up towards your home. And it's dark water from what we've been seeing. And it's rain coming down and the sky was gray. And from what witnesses said and reported to the RCMP was that a storm surge, a wave, hit the home of one of these women, a 73-year-old woman, entered the basement and then she wasn't seen again. They knew that she was there.

She hasn't been seen since. We've seen videos from reporters from CBC who have gone there to kind of who have been on the ground there, who have seen searchers going through debris that has washed up on shore on this rocky shoreline that just looks like matchsticks that were emptied out of a box and tossed there. But these matchsticks are giant logs and beams and pieces of wood and debris. And they're just trying to lift them, looking for this woman or any anything else, anyone else who might need help. Another woman who was washed away to sea, the same, a very similar situation happened. People saw her get washed away and then they

were able to rescue her. They were able to bring her back onto land and get her treated. She is doing okay physically as far as we know. So just a tragic scene, just how powerful this storm was in a community that, from what we've heard from people there, they're used to big weather, but not, you know, not like this. Yeah, you mentioned all this debris, really, the images coming out of there are so dramatic. There was this house, which was flipped completely upside down, I saw today, now just resting on its roof. It's awful. So meanwhile, over in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, there was also quite a bit of destruction. What kind of scenes have we seen there, Brett?

Yeah, I mean, that's one of the areas on the right-hand side of the track, the windier side of the storm track, where just incredibly powerful amounts of energy have just been released on that part. Again, Cape Breton Regional Municipality, one of the areas that had that localized state of emergency declared because there was so much damage, damage to homes, damage to businesses. I've never seen anything like that before. The words don't describe it. It's just devastating. I'm from Glace Bay.

I lived here all my life. It's probably the worst storm I've seen. And I mean, I'm here in Halifax, but we had reporters on the ground feeding pictures back from places like Glace Bay. And Glace Bay had a car wash there. And so this, you wouldn't have known that it was a car wash because when you take a look at the pictures, you take a look at the images coming out of Glace Bay, it kind of just looks like a mountain of disorganized building supplies. So just big, heavy, gray, rough cinder blocks all in a pile. And then kind of the remnants of what looks like

a roof behind it. You wouldn't necessarily even know that it's a building, let alone a car wash previously. And you think about this brick building that got blown down, blown over, flattened by this wind and how much force and energy was in that wind and how, you know, wooden structures wouldn't have stood a chance compared to, you know, this brick building standing there trying to stay upright in the wind. So it's just one more example of just how powerful this storm's been. Let's talk about PEI now, because I've also seen some pretty severe footage coming out of there, especially of floods. Yeah. So, I mean, one side of the track of the storm has lots of wind. The other side typically has lots of rain, lots of water that sometimes gets sucked up and lifted up and brought

onto land. And so that's a lot of what we saw in different parts of Prince Edward Island with lots of flooding, lots of kind of flood basements, ocean getting into places that the ocean shouldn't be, far onto land, but still lots of wind too. I mean, while I was doing live broadcasts here in Halifax, there were also live broadcasts happening with colleagues from CBC Charlottetown right outside the newsroom and they were doing broadcasts and, you know, partway through their live hit, they would pause and say, oh, wait, there's, you know, something flying down the street. Hold on a second. And it was just very clear that it was very much still an active storm while we were still

reporting on it. And lastly, New Brunswick, what kind of damage have we seen there? Yeah, again, it depends on exactly where you are. It's hard to put, you know, one description for an entire province, but I mean, Shediac, New Brunswick. In Shediac, there was, we're seeing pictures of a RV park or a spot where there are campers in RVs that were there. And it just looks like some of them were turned inside out by the wind and by these conditions. And we were speaking with folks here in Nova Scotia who had weathered the storm in RVs and so weren't there in Shediac, but were

here in Nova Scotia. And they described it as basically you were sitting there, lying there in your bed, and it felt like earthquakes every couple of seconds as the wind blows against this big box on wheels that isn't tethered to the ground at all. And it just went back and forth. And so I can imagine what it was like to be even closer to the center, the most powerful part of the storm up there in Shediac. Wow. That must have been so scary to be in an RV during that. So much destruction here.

I want to talk to you about one of the most widespread impacts of the storm, which has been power outages. How significant have the outages been in each province? I mean, at one point we had 95% of Prince Edward Island customers that didn't have power. Like that's almost, obviously, almost the entire population of Prince Edward Island not having power. Same story here in Nova Scotia. I mean, there's 525,000 customers, about a million people in Nova Scotia, but 525,000 customers. So that's a house or a business or a church or a community center, basically an invoice for Nova Scotia power. And like 80% of them,

414,000 didn't have electricity. So just huge widespread outages. And just you picture all the different things that you can't do when you don't have power. And many of these outages, and just you picture all the different things that you can't do when you don't have power. And it's many of these outages are still going to, they're not even close to being resolved. We're still seeing about, as we speak, 250,000 or so customers here in Nova Scotia that don't have electricity. And power crews and officials with Nova Scotia Power are saying, hey, listen, it's going to be, it's going to be days for lots of folks. And elsewhere in other provinces where there's even more widespread outages, it could be even more prolonged than that as well. And cell service has been really spotty too, right? Like even where you are in Halifax.

That is another issue that really gets people's gears. Because Hurricane Dorian, which we mentioned before, had this massive impact on cell phone service, cell phone access, because it knocked out power to a lot of places, including cell phone towers. There are no reports of serious injuries or deaths from the storm, but plenty of upset cell phone customers

who wouldn't have been able to report a problem if there was one. Service was spotty. This morning we woke up probably around 7.30 and we had like no service at all at Talos and Kudo. Many cell phone towers have their own generators built in or their own battery packs built in. When those generators either ran out of fuel or the batteries were depleted, those towers went offline as well. So during Hurricane Dorian, which was back in 2019, a couple of years ago, your cell phone in some places and many places just didn't work. You couldn't make calls. You couldn't look up the latest CBC News

alerts or a CBC News website. You couldn't check on family members on Facebook. Your phone was a brick, basically. But there were complaints that were made and reporters were asking the federal government, the provincial government and officials, because this is such a key service, a key tool that people need to rely on. Can I guess what's happened? Is it nothing? Is it nothing? You're right. It's nothing.

Nothing's happened. Cell phone companies will say that something has happened. In fact, before the storm, they said, no, we've learned our lesson. Listen, of course, Hurricane Dorian. Can you believe how badly that went? They said, we are ready for this storm. It doesn't seem like they were as ready as they could be for this storm because the impact, the effects, the outcome is the same.

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It's become just this mythology of, you know, people had freezers full of meat that by day four of no power to that freezer, they wheeled out barbecues to the streets that were closed still because there were trees on either end. And people just cooked up meat in the street with barbecues and just said, this is going to go to waste. Have a burger, have these steaks that we had in the freezer. So that was 2003. And it feels like that same community sentiment is still very much alive. I mean, we were parked on one street that didn't have power. Again, it depends kind of block by block. For the most part, power is out. And so we were on one of those streets where there was trees down and someone came out from a home that I knew didn't

have power. And she came out and said, hey, listen, we don't have power, but we got a Coleman stove going on the back deck and we're going to boil some water. Can we get you some tea? Can we get you a cup of tea or something like that? And I was like, I said, you know, I said, no, we're fine. Thank you so much. Like, can we get you a cup of tea? Go to Tim's or go to the local store? And people kind of sharing food, sharing tea, and sharing caring and love for one another is really part of this storm. Because people are checking on neighbors.

People are having impromptu street parties. Because there's no cars going by because there might be a tree at either end of the street. And just talk. And this is another part, kind of a typical part, of a big storm when it rolls through this part of the country. Yeah, that's really nice. Well, our thoughts are definitely with all of those people who are trying to pick up the pieces right now. And thank you so much for giving us this overview, Brad. It's been super helpful.

Of course. Thank you. helpful. Of course. Thank you. An update on this story before we go today. After we recorded with Brett, RCMP announced that the body of the 73-year-old woman who was missing in Port-au-Basque, Newfoundland, has been recovered. Her home was one of more than 20 that were destroyed in the storm and hundreds of people are still displaced in the community. For updates on post-tropical storm Fiona, you can head to cbc.ca slash news.

That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner and we'll talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.