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A state of emergency remained in place across much of Cape Breton on Sunday after northeastern Nova Scotia was battered by wind and a heavy rain storm.
But there was some hope that state of emergency could be lifted in the island’s central and northern areas on Sunday night.
Warden Lois Landry said Richmond County on the island’s southeast corner bore the brunt of the weekend storm.
“We’re a community that has experienced hurricanes regularly over our history,” she said Sunday afternoon.
“I think [it’s] safe to say we would get at least one a year. This one seems to have hit differently.
“We saw trees down across roads on people’s property. That’s really Category 1 hurricane-level damage and that just wasn’t in the forecast.”
The storm brought strong winds and rainfall totals upwards of 200 millimetres in several communities, but it was not forecast to be nor was it declared a hurricane.
However, it wreaked havoc on roads and bridges Friday night and Saturday across the island, including the heavily populated Cape Breton Regional Municipality.
CBRM escaped the worst of the storm though, with some streets and roads closed due to rising water being reopened later in the day Saturday.
Richmond, Inverness and Victoria counties declared a state of emergency Saturday, along with the Town of Port Hawkesbury.
Trees were knocked down, there were widespread power outages and streams and ditches overflowed just about everywhere, but in some cases little damage was left behind.
Two communities in different parts of Richmond County, River Bourgeois and St. Georges Channel on West Bay Road, remained cut off by wash-outs Sunday.
Landry said that’s a priority concern for emergency access, but there are also questions about the infrastructure underneath roads and bridges that got submerged and appear to be OK.
“We have had road washouts before. We have had power outages before that have not required a state of emergency,” she said.
“What gave us pause and what directed our action in this instance was really not having a confident sense that the roads we were driving on, the bridges we were driving over, were safe.”
Municipality ‘staggered’ by storm
The storm also seems to have produced one fatality, although RCMP would not confirm the cause of death.
Landry said the province and the municipality are still assessing the storm damage.
“We’re staggered by the extent of the damage and the likelihood of what all that’s going to cost,” she said.
“All of that pales in comparison to waking up and getting confirmation of a death of a resident as a result of this weather event.”
Residents are rallying around each other to help out, Landry said, including those who volunteered to stay up overnight to warn motorists about compromised roads in areas where there wasn’t time or resources to put up barricades.
In Inverness County, on the west side of the island, water spilled over roads, some trees were down and there were scattered power outages, said Warden Bonny MacIsaac.
However, she said, the electricity had mostly returned by Sunday afternoon and the damage was being tallied.
“The integrity of a lot of roads [is] certainly a main concern right now,” MacIsaac said.
Provincial road crews busy
In an email Sunday, Public Works spokesperson Gary Andrea said highway crews have been busy.
“At one point, we had more than 120 roads closed or damaged by flooding,” he said.
“Currently, 54 roads are closed. The rest have either fully or partially reopened. Eight bridges were also damaged and two will need to be replaced.”
What locals expected to be a typical rain event turned into an emergency in Cape Breton after roughly 200 millimetres of rain fell, accompanied by powerful wind and thunderstorms. The storm brought flooding and washed out roads, and it stranded many people.
In Victoria County, which runs from the middle of Cape Breton to its northern tip, Warden Jackie Organ said residents were very lucky.
She said damage was minimal and the state of emergency might end Sunday.
“I am waiting to hear back from public works and our [emergency management] office and … it will be probably lifted sometime this evening,” Organ said.
Port Hawkesbury expects significant bill
Roads throughout much of the three rural counties are provincially owned, but most of Port Hawkesbury’s streets are the town’s responsibility.
Mayor Brenda Chisholm-Beaton said it will likely be days before the full impact of the storm is known in Port Hawkesbury, but the cost is likely to be significant.
A large tree fell and damaged Prince Street and the asphalt will need to be repaired near the corner of Old Sydney Road and Bernard Street.
The town is built on a hill leading down to the Strait of Canso, so low-lying areas got submerged by runoff from the rain, Chisholm-Beaton said.
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