Brian “Smoky” Osmond was cooking at his home in coastal Port au Basquis, Newfoundland when he discovered floodwaters seeping into his garage on Saturday morning.
Osmond moved his truck up the hill to safety. But when he returned, a strong storm hit.
“I went back to the door and a wave took me and went downstairs,” he told CBC News. “I thought I was gone.”
Osmond was dragged into the bay before he miraculously freed himself. When he came to a neighbour’s house, wet, he watched in disbelief a second wave completely destroying his house.
“It was just luck,” he said. “It wasn’t the time to go.”
In the days that followed Post-tropical storm Fiona hits Atlantic CanadaThe scale of the devastation became painfully apparent to the population. Power Direcho, the worst ever in the area, killed two people, flattened dozens of homes, swept the land into the ocean and left hundreds of thousands in Nova Scotia, southern Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island without power. As residents look at the arduous clean-up and rebuilding efforts, experts say the damage done to hundreds of millions highlights the need to build defensively against the effects of climate change.
“Unfortunately, reality with Climate change is that there will be more extreme weather events. “We’re going to have to think about how to make sure we’re ready for whatever comes to us,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters as he witnessed the devastation in Nova Scotia. The federal government has Send Nearly 600 soldiers from the Canadian Armed Forces are helping with the cleanup and have pledged to provide immediate assistance to the residents.
Larger urban centers such as Halifax were largely spared the worst of the storm, but homes throughout the area were reduced to rubble and debris, roads were washed away, and thousands of trees destroyed the city in uncharacteristically strong winds, which blew at 190 km/h. summit.
By Wednesday, more than 160,000 people were still without power, and torrential rains in some areas hampered clean-up efforts.
“We are shocked by something bigger than we’ve been through before,” Dennis King, Prince Edward Island’s prime minister, told reporters. “We are all feeling the effects of that. We are all so vulnerable.”
Prince Edward Island, famous for its agriculture, is bracing for a major destruction of its potato, soybean and apple crops, which are among the province’s major economic drivers. Fishing boats and potato storage buildings were also severely damaged. PARKS Official Spokesperson Canada He said the force of the storm left a “horrific” level of erosion in its wake. Much of the island is surrounded by distinctive red sand, which helps keep the ocean at bay. In many areas, sand dunes have washed out into the ocean, and it will take years to rebuild nature.
While Trudeau lamented the devastation, he also praised the “stories of tremendous resilience” that have emerged.
In the hard-hit town of Glass Bay, Nova Scotia, Carol and Liu Yang, owners of Jay Chicken & Ribs, have distributed hundreds of free hot meals to residents, cooked by the light of donated light bulbs using a propane stove.
“We just started trying to help the neighbours. But as a restaurant owner, I knew there was something else we could do,” Carroll told the Guardian.
Hundreds of residents queued outside the two sites in the Yangtze River for the first hot meal in days. And the customers embraced her, some of whom had no homes to return to, and she served them packed food.
“They told me the meal made their bodies and hearts happy,” she said.
She and her husband worked as pharmacists in China before immigrating to Nova Scotia 10 years ago. They bought the restaurant six years ago and run it with their young daughter.
Yang says more than 1,000 meals have been distributed to those in need, and donations – locally and from other counties – have also arrived to help her family keep cooking.
The destruction is expected to cost hundreds of millions, according to early estimates to insurance companies, putting it on track to become the costliest storm in the region’s history. Since storm surge is not covered by insurance, many residents are likely to bear the cost themselves.
“This kind of destruction actually gives us a golden opportunity to get things back in a better way,” said Glenn McGillivray, managing director of the Catastrophic Loss Reduction Institute. “And this is critical because we will see more of these in the future in these extreme storms. Climate change is a direct cause of that. The East Coast has to be better prepared.”
He said all new infrastructure projects or rebuilding should undergo a climate assessment. McGillivray also cautioned against rebuilding in areas where climate risks are higher, including coastal communities.
The storm did exactly what the forecasters said it would. She went where they said she would go. And she was as strong as they said she would be. He said the damage was caused by strong winds, heavy rain and storm surge, especially in small and isolated communities.
“And so we saw Newfoundland’s salt buildings, sitting on the rocks you see on postcards, couldn’t handle that kind of storm.”
While Ottawa has increasingly highlighted and supported building improvements, McGillivray says more needs to be done for flexibility in federal building code.
“We just have this tendency to get things back to how they were. Everyone wants to get their lives back to normal as quickly as possible, which is understandable. But that won’t work in a changing climate.”
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