Courtesy Terry Osmondĭevastation is ‘breathtaking,’ mayor says Water surrounds a collapsed home in Channel-Port aux Basque, Newfoundland, on Saturday.

The Canadian Armed Forces will also be deployed to the region to assist in damage assessment and cleanup, Trudeau said. Homes – or parts of them – collapsed in heaps, and debris littered the ground and seawater.Ĭanadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Saturday afternoon the government was assessing damage from the storm, but officials had already begun helping communities who were affected, including approving Nova Scotia’s request for federal assistance. She was taken to a hospital the extent of her injuries wasn’t immediately known, police said.Ībout a 30-minute drive to the east, several buildings were blown apart In the coastal Newfoundland community of Burnt Islands, video posted to Facebook by Pius Scott showed. “Never in my lifetime” has there been “so much destruction … in our area,” Osmond, 62, wrote to CNN.Ī woman in town was rescued from water Saturday afternoon after her home collapsed, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said. Pictures by another area resident, Terry Osmond, showed a collapsed building in Channel-Port aux Basques surrounded by seawater at the shoreline, and splintered wood and other debris were scattered across town. He had no idea Saturday evening if his home is still standing and emergency personnel stopped him from driving over to check. Roy told CNN he evacuated from his home and staying with a cousin on higher ground.

“It is surreal what is happening here,” Roy added. Hurricane Juan battered the Canadian coast as a Category 2 storm in 2003, knocking down power lines and trees and leaving behind extensive damage. “I’ve lived through Hurricane Juan and that was a foggy day compared to this monster,” Roy, 50, told CNN. René Roy, editor-in-chief of Wreckhouse Press, a local news publication, described a scene of carnage in the storm: uprooted trees, at least eight nearby homes vanished in the wake of a violent storm surge, cabins floating by, a boat carried by floodwaters into the middle of a local playground. Huge waves reaching the eastern shores of Nova Scotia and southwestern Newfoundland caused “severe coastal flooding” at the town, the Canadian Hurricane Centre said Saturday night.Īuthorities in the province declared a state of emergency for the town amid “multiple electrical fires, residential flooding and washouts” Saturday morning. In Channel-Port aux Basques, houses were washed away, Mayor Brian Button said in a Facebook video Saturday. Some coastal homes in the area collapsed and a few toppled structures fell into the sea or were surrounded by floodwater, pictures sent from the province Saturday morning showed. Fiona ripped through Canada’s eastern seaboard at hurricane strength after making landfall in Nova Scotia on Saturday, slamming the area with fierce winds and storm surge, sapping power for hundreds of thousands and washing away or collapsing some coastal homes.įiona, now a post-tropical cyclone, continued to slowly weaken Saturday evening and into the night as it moved away from the coastal town of Channel-Port aux Basques, in Newfoundland and Labrador, where the storm left a trail of devastation.

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