The Decibel - Recovery stalls in Prince Edward Island a month after Fiona

Episode Date: October 24, 2022

It’s been a month since post-tropical storm Fiona slammed into Atlantic Canada, causing huge amounts of devastation. In Prince Edward Island, thousands of trees came down, houses were destroyed, and people remained without power for weeks. Amidst a labour shortage, recovery efforts in the province are moving slowly.The Globe’s Greg Mercer visited PEI recently and spoke to people picking up the pieces after Fiona about what comes next.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Hi, I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and you're listening to The Decibel, from The Globe and Mail. It's been a month since the powerful storm Fiona battered the coasts of the Atlantic provinces. It caused at least $660 million in damages. In Prince Edward Island, it knocked out power to 82,000 homes and businesses, and it's taken weeks for people to get it back. Yeah, I was there, you know, almost three weeks after the storm passed through, and frankly, I was stunned at the level of devastation that's still kind of evident everywhere. The Globe's Greg Mercer recently visited PEI. I mean, we're talking thousands of trees wherever you drive around the island, just piles of giant trees that have been

pulled out of the ground that are still waiting to be cleared. You know, there's still a lot of buildings that had severe damage that, you know, are missing roofs. I passed by old barns that were torn in half, fishing wharves that were left crumpled, you know, lobster boats that were thrown aside by the storm. It was staggering, frankly, that three weeks after the storm, there's still that level of damage. He spoke with people there about what comes next after spending the last month picking up the pieces after Fiona. This is The Decibel. Greg, thanks so much for joining me again. Hey, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

One of the places that you went to in PEI was this cottage resort and golf course. Can you tell me, what was it like there? Yeah, so you drive down this little rural road out on this point in Rustico to get there, to Rustico Resort and Golf and Cottages. And as you're coming into the place, there are these two, what's left of cottages, really it's mostly just debris and a couple of roofs, right at the edge of the road. And it feels very strange that they're right there. And as you drive by, you realize that they are just, there's nothing left of them. They've been completely torn apart. And then as you enter into the property, you learn why.

It's because they used to be by the shore. And the storm surge literally picked them up and threw them onto the road and just left them in a pile of rubble um so yeah i mean as soon as you arrive immediately it's clear how much damage there was there's thousands of trees on the golf course that were uprooted or snapped uh there there's a giant buoy that should normally be out in the in the harbor sorry out in the cove that's uh that's sitting up You know, all of the cottages that are along their shoreline had water damage. It's pretty extensive, and you see it as soon as you pull into their property. Yeah, wow.

And I understand you did talk to the owners of the resort. Can you tell me about them? Yeah, so David Saunders and Miradell and Chetta, they're new owners. They just bought this place in the springtime. So they were just really finishing up their first successful season as new owners. They just bought this place in the springtime. So they were just really finishing up their first successful season as new owners. So it's your wedding day on that day, Saturday. So with your families and everybody here.

You're kidding. Yeah. But of course, Fiona, this horrible storm, had other plans. It came overnight, Friday into Saturday morning, and turned everything upside down for them. So they were supposed to get married, actually, on the day of the hurricane. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, they had something like 40 guests who were at their, you know, staying in their cottages and at their resort. They had a wedding tent, and they had, you know, all the things you gather when you're planning a wedding all of that stuff had to be had to be tossed aside when the storm came through I mean in the middle of the

night on on Saturday like 4 a.m. Saturday morning David actually had to go cottage to cottage and rescue relatives who were like up in some cases up to their chest in seawater. David's friend told David, come and help, come and get me, I'm gonna die. Wow. So David said, you have to hang in there, I'll come and get you. So he needs, so David went out the front door and he said, the water's just this high, you can't go out there. So David grabbed a rope and one by one was basically carrying people out of there and escorting them to safety, to higher ground.

They walked all the way because the car, you couldn't even bring a car there. You couldn't drive. But it was how high by the time they got out there? Like chest high? Yeah, chest high. Wow. And the waves were just really, really scary. We have videos.

The ocean came up quite a bit, like an unprecedented level, because the force of Fiona was so great that it raised the entire surface of the water so high. And that combined with high tide and hurricane-strength winds just pushed the water further onto land than we've ever seen it before in Prince Edward Island. People were afraid for their lives. They thought they were going to die. And the miracle of all this is that, you know, it only postponed their wedding by a day. You know, no one was hurt. David and Miradel were able to recover everything that they needed. And they had to bring in generators to kind of bring in some electricity. They cooked

everything outside on these butane stoves. They even found Meridel's bridal bouquet. It was inside one of the cottages. The next day realized that one was crushed and there's a fridge somewhere inside it with some of the flowers. Right. The cottage was destroyed but a neighbor used some heavy equipment to lift the roof off of the building, and they found the fridge that the flowers were inside. Lift this roof up. You can see the butt end of the fridge. Get out of here. Put a chain on it, and he was able to just go. Pull it in.

Just the fridge. He was able to grab it. The door, and a couple of them were turned over, but they were still there. He pulled out the fridge, and inside were the flowers. And so they had her bouquet, but they were still there. He pulled out the fridge and inside were the flowers. And so they had her bouquet and they could carry on. That's amazing. That's pretty incredible to hear. And when you talked to them, Greg, this was a few weeks after then. How were they feeling when you talked to them at that point? I mean, they were remarkably upbeat about the whole thing.

You know, they said, look, it's a miracle that nobody was hurt. They said, look, we can rebuild. I mean, it's just a golf course. They plan to reopen in the spring for guests. You know, they've got a lot of work in front of them. They have to rebuild. I think eight cottages were destroyed by the storm. A lot of others suffered significant damage. You know, the main building, the restaurant and kitchen was flooded. So they have a long road ahead. But they're optimistic that they can turn the corner and be reopened in a few short months. Yeah.

I guess you wondered, like, that's a pretty scary thing to go through. Does that stick with them as well? Yeah, Maridel especially, she said, she told me it was terrifying that, you know, she and her sister said, frankly, they were traumatized by it. Like they left shortly after the storm and went back to Toronto for a while. When they returned the week that I was there, they said that when they saw the sea for the first time, they started crying. It was that traumatic. Like they're going to be scarred by this for a first time, they started crying. It was that traumatic. Like, they're going to be scarred by this for a long time. You know, this was an awful event to go through. And, you know,

they really hope to never see anything like it again. And I know you talked to some other people when you were out in PEI, Greg. Does what happened to this family actually fit with what happened to other people that you talked to as well? Yeah, I mean, there's stories like this around the whole island. I mean, you didn't have to travel far to hear these kind of stories. It wasn't until I got up here that I realized sort of the pickle that we were in. So I talked to one resident, Kevin Ryan, who lives on the south shore of Prince Edward Island. He lives in a place called South Pinette, which is about a half an hour outside of Charlottetown.

He lives down a long wooded laneway that leads toward the sea in an old century farmhouse with his family. On the night of the storm, their laneway basically was completely collapsed by trees. When you go to it, it looks like the entire forest collapsed. And that fell onto the power lines that run to their house. So they spent about nearly three weeks without power in their home, you know, just waiting for crews to come by to clear this laneway. Because when a tree falls on your power line, you're not supposed to clear it yourself. You have to wait for a trained crew because those lines can still be live and there's a risk of electrocution.

So it's very dangerous. The damage was so extensive that we all knew it was going to be a long time. When I saw the lane, it was like, guys, we're in for one. Kevin and his family just had to tough it out. And, you know, we met them. It was nearing three weeks at that point, and they were starting to get frustrated that they had waited that long without any kind of power. That's a pretty tough situation to be in. I mean, what did it mean for him and his family to not have power for that long?

Well, I mean, basically, you're camping in a house, right? I mean, you're relying on a wood stove to heat your home. And this was, we were into October by that point. So there were some cold nights. I mean, all of their cooking had to be done outside, you know, on a barbecue or on a camp stove, you know, you're using a flashlight to see around your home as soon as the sun sets. He had to go to his mother's house to shower, you know, I mean, he has two young school-aged kids, so for them, I mean, it was frustrating, and all the things that we take for granted, all the things in our home that require electronics, even, you know, our water pumps, you know, so you can't turn on the tap and use your water i mean they lost all the food in their fridge in their freezer you know it was trying for them i mean kevin was quick to say well there

are others who are worse off than us and and you know we'll we'll be okay but clearly it was a frustrating ordeal for him and his family but there's a lot of questions being asked in prince of rhode island about how it could be that some of these homes took two weeks or more to be reconnected. In fact, there are calls now for a public inquiry to examine how the government responded to this storm and better understand why some of these delays were as bad as they were. Because there's a lot of folks on Prince Edward Island who don't totally accept that this was just an unprecedented storm. They're just saying, PEI just simply wasn't prepared. We'll be right back.

It seems like there's obviously a ton of cleanup that needs to be done, but it does seem like it's taking a long time to get these things done. So do we have a sense of why the cleanup and getting power is taking this long? Partly, we do know there's a labor shortage on the island that has exacerbated things, right? I mean, and that labor shortage was a problem long before Fiona, but you add a historic storm to it and it just compounds everything. It's gotten so bad, actually, that the provincial government has offered to compensate contractors from other parts of the country who come in and who can help with the cleanup and the rebuild. They're saying, we'll pay your bill to get to Prince Edward Island if you come and

help us. They're that desperate for people. Why is there a labor shortage, Greg? Like what's going on? There's been one for a while. Just Prince Edward Island has been growing. There's a housing shortage. So there's not a lot of places for people to stay so that many people have left. And it's, you know, when you have that combination of a housing boom, which has been happening around Charlottetown, a lot of those people are tied up on those projects. And when suddenly there's this spike in demand for tradespeople and a real limited supply, you just get extremely long waits for anyone to be able to help out.

Are we seeing these delays in other Atlantic provinces as well, like delays for the cleanup and things like this after the hurricane? Well, there's a labor shortage across Atlantic Canada, but it seems to be most pronounced on Prince Edward Island. And I don't know if that's because of the nature of it being an island and because housing is in such short supply there, but it's certainly a problem elsewhere too. And so how are people thinking about rebuilding in PEI particular, but I guess broadly in Atlantic Canada as well? It's a good question. There's a lot of folks who, you know, who love, you know, having seasonal cottages or homes on the shore in Prince Edward Island because of the view. I mean, that's exactly why they're there. But I think a storm like Fiona has caused some of them to think twice about that and to think about whether or not they want to live there anymore.

Certainly, I talked to people in Newfoundland the previous week in Port-au-Basque where something like 100 homes were destroyed by this powerful storm surge. We're saying we don't want to live at the edge of the ocean anymore. We don't feel safe.'t want to live at the edge of the ocean anymore we don't feel safe we want to live further inland you know once you've gone through the experience of a storm like Fiona people don't want to see anything like that again yeah and so that's saying something in a place where for generations they have lived literally on the edge of the sea now people are saying we don't feel safe living that close to the water anymore. We can't trust the water in this era where the storms seem to be more and more violent.

So that's kind of looking at where we would be building. So like the proximity to the ocean. But I wonder about like actually rebuilding differently. Like are people talking about how we can build things that would actually be more resilient to this kind of storm? Yeah, they definitely are. You know, in Prince Edward Island and elsewhere, I mean, and not just with housing, but with infrastructure as well. People are talking about how do we build schools more resilient so that the, you know, the roofs don't tear off when you have a storm like this or bridges or roadways that don't wash away when you have these historic storms that seem to be increasingly common. So absolutely, we're hearing that from government officials on down to private

homeowners that people are saying, maybe we need to build homes that are more hurricane strength resistant, you know, in the way that they build homes in places like, say, South Carolina, where hurricanes are a more common occurrence. That conversation is happening. And I think Fiona has just sped that along a lot. The couple that you spoke to at the resort, Meridel and David, you said they're planning on rebuilding. Did they talk to you about how they're planning on doing that? I think they're still waiting to see where they can rebuild. And, you know, like a lot of people in the island, they're waiting for some clarity from insurance on what will be insured. They're waiting for clarity

on whether there's going to be new regulations about how close to the shoreline you can build. So a lot of people in Prince Edward Island kind of are in a bit of a limbo right now. You know, they need more clarity around what the future looks like on PEI in terms of rebuilding. So they don't have those answers other than they're determined to rebuild. They just don't know if some new construction will be allowed in some of those locations. And you probably know this better than I do, Greg. Like for a storm like this, is the damage usually stuff that you can claim for your insurance or not? It depends on your coverage, but a lot of private property has clauses that prevent claims related to saltwater. So you could claim house damage from wind, but if the ocean rose up and the storm

surge washed through your house, well, you couldn't claim that. And that's affected a lot of people. So those people are eligible for some federal compensation that they have to apply for and they have to prove that there was damage. But there have been some announcements made around that in recent weeks. Yeah. Just lastly here, I guess, how is all of this affecting people? How would you describe the mood of people on the island, how they're feeling about what happened and where they go from here? I do think people were a little bit traumatized by the storm, you know, and I think this was eye-opening for a lot of people. You know, this is a part of Atlantic Canada that is used to severe storms, right? I mean, hurricane season is a thing in atlanta

canada but not like this i mean fiona was in a league of its own in terms of its power it's certainly it's the worst storm that atlanta canada has ever seen in terms of the the cost of the damage that it that it brought but you know islanders are are some of the best kind of people and they are, you know, they're very quick to help each other out and to try to find the upside and to, you know, talk about how determined they are to build back and to have their island kind of reopened to tourists next spring. Because, of course, tourism is a very important industry on PEI. So, you know, Islanders are taking this in stride as best as they can, and they're determined to carry on. Greg, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. My pleasure. Thanks, Manika. That's it for today. I'm Manika Raman-Wilms. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin.

David Crosby edits the show, Kasia Mihailovic is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.