BONAVISTA PENINSULA, N.L. -- The blizzard that rocked eastern Newfoundland Jan. 17-19 was called a hurricane inside of a snowstorm by one weather forecaster.
Shelley Harris of Bonavista agrees. She said if it’s not the storm of a century, it’s at least the storm of the decade.
It was certainly a wild and a blustery start to the new decade. Harris and her fellow Bonavista residents were smacked with 75-plus centimetres of snow, 160-plus kilometres-per-hour winds and power outages.
Harris says she was one of the luckier ones. She had a generator, snowblower and plenty of supplies but she admits she doesn’t want to see another storm like it any time soon.
Friday was a bit of a wake-up call for her. Originally from Ontario, Harris moved to the province about five years ago.
“It was something I’ve never really seen before,” she said. “This is definitely one for the books.”
Her home on Adam Pardy Drive in Bonavista was severely buffeted with snow and wind. She lost power on Friday around 4:30 p.m. and didn’t get it back until Sunday night, 10 p.m.
“We were stocked up on food … you’re literally housebound. Even when I went outside to do a quick video, it was scary. The wind was just taking me.”
She said her heart goes out to anyone who had to go without power for an extended period, without a generator or any auxiliary heat, because it was extremely cold.
She’s now been dug out with the help of a neighbour’s plow, and despite an additional 15 centimetres of snow Sunday night, said they’re doing well.
But she doesn’t want to at the mercy of future storms and plans to be even more prepared if a big storm looms. She said she’ll have more practical food stored and will undertake periodic shoveling to lessen the load once the storm is over—just not in the extremely high winds such as the ones faced Friday evening.
Harris had lots of good things to say about the efforts of service workers and commented on how events such as the storm can bring the community together.
“Everybody’s been helping everybody, it’s great that way.”
Municipalities take stock
The Town of Bonavista was one of the hardest hit with this blizzard. Like many other areas, the town called a state of emergency.
Mayor John Norman told The Packet Monday he expected schools to reopen Tuesday — although that will be the decision of the school district.
Post-storm cleanup is under control, he said and lane widening is continuing.
Although there was damage to private properties around the town, Norman says his biggest concern at this point is the destruction of parts of the town’s sea wall structures. He said the damage amounted to an emergency.
With multiple kilometres of sea wall in the town, in areas like Long Beach and Swyers’ Beach, there are six different breaks or full collapses. He said in two of these areas 10 to 15 feet of land was washed away behind where the sea wall would normally stand.
Norman is calling for provincial and federal support to help with the issue. He says he’s already reached out to the area’s MHA and MP to get the ball rolling.
Norman speculated repairs could run anywhere from hundreds of thousands of dollars into millions.
“Now we’re in a situation where locations can no longer wait,” stressed Norman. “We have to act now, in the coming months. This can’t be an application we put in in a year and implement in the next two years. Personally, I don’t see us having that time on our side.”
The mayor said the town is evaluating lessons learned from the experience with their emergency measures committee.
“There were a lot of challenges with this particular storm,” he said. “Not only did we have the incredibly high winds, with the snow that caused all streets to be closed so we couldn’t actually plow escort ambulances later on in the storm … we also lost cell service as power returned to parts of the community.” He said all this hampered their steps in dealing with the emergency situation.
He addressed the lack of warming stations in the community — they are in the town’s emergency plan — but no one was able to reach the stations at the peak of the storm, and they had expected to have power back earlier than it was restored.
“By the time roads became passable, many neighbourhoods in the community began to have power turned on again. There was definitely some debate on what the criteria will be for warming stations. We have 1,600-plus homes … we had an emergency warming station set up with power at the hospital for those that needed medical attention. But as far as the average citizen goes … there’s a lot of dialogue going on about where we could’ve put a warming station and when. And if we could’ve done something better in this case.”
Norman said the town will welcome all feedback and hoped things will work better next time.
He thanked town workers, saying he’s impressed with the amount of effort put in over a very long weekend. With everything now open, he says it’s a testament to good management, staff and organization.
“We can’t be perfect in every way, so we have some lessons to learn in this disaster, just like we have in the past.”
Meanwhile, nearby Municipality of Trinity Bay North managed to escape relatively unscathed.
Town manager Darryl Johnson said power was out for about 18 hours, but they were able to use multiple options of warming centres in the various communities. However, with just a few using the service, they consolidated to one location.
As far as snowclearing, the municipality was forced to pull operators off the road during periods of zero visibility but eventually were able to open every road and start widening by Saturday morning.
Johnson said no state of emergency was called. All their businesses were already voluntarily closed, and there were ambulance operators situated in each community.
“The boys found it harder (Monday) morning actually than Saturday,” he laughed. “It was heavier snow and drifted in places it didn’t drift before.”
This was all accomplished despite a couple of pieces of equipment being out of commission.
“I was quite impressed and happy with the work the boys had done,” he said.
Twitter: @jejparsons
