Better infrastructure needed to cope with climate, PM says

More than 180,000 still without power as cleanup continues

STANLEY BRIDGE, P.E.I. Justin Trudeau travelled Tuesday to Nova Scotia and P.E.I., where he pledged to find ways to build more resilient infrastructure after inspecting the extensive damage caused by posttropical storm Fiona.

“There’s always lessons to be learned,” the prime minister told reporters in Stanley Bridge, P.E.I., where a massive storm surge and hurricane-force winds upended buildings and tossed fishing boats onto the shore.

“Unfortunately, the reality with climate change is that there’s going to be more extreme weather events. We’re going to have to think about how to make sure we’re ready for whatever comes at us.”

On Saturday morning, Fiona left a trail of destruction across a wide swath of Atlantic Canada, stretching from Nova Scotia’s eastern mainland to Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island and southwestern Newfoundland.

Power was knocked out, scores of homes were flattened, roads were washed out and the resulting cleanup is expected to take months if not years to complete. As well, the record-breaking storm is being blamed for two deaths — one in Newfoundland and Labrador and the other in Nova Scotia.

“The federal government is here as a partner,” Trudeau said in Stanley Bridge. “We were working in advance of the storm to prepare for the worst, and the worst happened. But at the same time, we’ve heard tremendous stories of resilience.”

More than 180,000 Atlantic Canadian homes and businesses were still without electricity by late Tuesday afternoon — more than 122,000 of them in Nova Scotia and about 61,000 in P.E.I.

Marvin Graham, owner of Graham’s Deep Sea Fishing in Stanley Bridge, said Trudeau asked him how much the storm would cost in terms of lost business, considering his fishing boat had been lifted out of the water and dumped on the town’s wharf.

Graham said it was too early to tell, and he told Trudeau that something had to be done about recurring storm surges battering the coastline.

On Tuesday, the Canadian Space Agency posted two satellite photos of Prince Edward Island, one taken on Aug. 21, the other on Sunday, a day after Fiona lashed the island with hurricane-force winds that exceeded 140 kilometres per hour.

The second photo shows the blue waters around the Island streaked by huge underwater plumes of sand and soil extending far offshore.

The agency posted a tweet saying the photos illustrate “the extent to which the extreme wind and wave action of the storm has churned up the sea floor and eroded the coastline.”

In Ottawa, Defence Minister Anita Anand confirmed there are now about 300 military members assisting with recovery efforts in Atlantic Canada, with Nova Scotia, P.E.I. and Newfoundland each getting 100 troops.