Hundreds of thousands of Nova Scotians lost power Friday night amid high winds and rain as Hurricane Fiona arrived, and officials warned the lights, for some, could remain out for a long time.
Fiona could be “a Dorian-level event,” Nova Scotia Power storm leader Matt Drover told reporters earlier Friday, referring to the 2019 storm that knocked out power to some in the province for a week .
As of 3 a.m., more than 360,000 Nova Scotia customers were without power, according to the utility’s online outage map. That’s about 70 per cent of Nova Scotia Power customers.
Many of those outages were due to high winds and rain, according to the map. He said power could be back on Saturday for some, while others may have to wait until Wednesday.
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High winds make it difficult to restore power, Drover said.
“When the winds come overhead [80 km/h]we’re going to put the buckets down,” he said at a briefing Friday afternoon. “We can still go out and do assessments of what the damage might be, but we won’t actually be able to get the buckets up in the air until the winds drop below 80 “.
Fiona is expected to make landfall as a hurricane-strength post-tropical storm. Environment Canada says wind gusts could reach over 120 km/h in parts of Sydney and Halifax.
More than 800 Nova Scotia Power workers are in the field ready to restore power and “hundreds more behind the scenes [are] coordinating that effort,” Drover said.
Most of Nova Scotia’s electricity infrastructure is above ground, with more than half a million poles across the province, Drover said, although some are underground.
“Especially in the province of Nova Scotia, where there’s a significant amount of rock in the ground, it’s expensive to install underground lines.”
“And when outages occur (underground systems are not free from outages), when there are problems with those systems, sometimes it can take longer to restore them, it takes a while to find where the problem is.”
While crews won’t be able to restore lines in very strong winds, Drover encouraged people to report downed lines.
Avoid dropped lines, report immediately
“If you see downed wires, don’t go near them,” Drover said.
He said hospitals and public health areas would be the priority for restorations.
“And then we’ll go into communities and sub-communities there and individual homes at the end of the restoration,” Drover said.
Stay away from the sea
The Nova Scotia incident management division for the Nova Scotia Office of Emergency Management said the province is “definitely going to be hit hard.”
“It’s going to be a big storm. We’re asking all Nova Scotians to be safe, have a 72-hour preparedness kit and check on neighbors,” Jason Mew, director of the bureau’s incident management division, told reporters of Nova Scotia Emergency Management. .
Erica Fleck, deputy director of Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency Management, said the boardwalk at Halifax’s downtown waterfront and Peggys Cove will be barricaded later Friday.
“It’s going to be really unsafe, just like any area near water, I’d rather people stay inside and be safe,” Fleck said.
Christina Lamey, spokeswoman for the Cape Breton Regional Municipality, said Center 200 will be open Friday night for people who may feel unsafe during the storm. Center 200 will open at 8 p.m
Opening of Center 200 in Cape Breton tonight
“If people could bring their own supplies as much as possible, that would be good,” Lamey said.
The Community Homeless Shelter on Sydney’s Townsend Street will be open overnight during the storm for homeless people.
Lamey and Fleck said the locations of the comfort centers will be announced as soon as it is safe to travel again. Lamey said people should not travel during the storm.
Membertou School in Cape Breton will open as a warming center in the event of power outages, the Membertou Development Corporation told CBC News in an email.