On September 24th, Hurricane Fiona hit the Canadian Atlantic, causing catastrophe, including two fatalities. On the North Shore of Prince Edward Island, storms tore trees, shattered docks and flooded structures.
Recovery is expected to take many years. But given what Fiona has shown about the growing threat posed by hurricanes, more transformative implications could still come as Atlantic Canadians rewrite their relationship with the ocean.
why i wrote this
Canada has never experienced a storm as powerful as Hurricane Fiona in September. Now, like many coastal areas, Prince Edward Island is rethinking how to coexist with an unpredictable sea.
After Fiona hits the southwestern coast of Newfoundland, Sean Bass finds the community devastated by a storm surge. In many places the docks were broken like toothpicks, and fishing nets and gear were scattered in the water. Mr Bath and his cleaners headed to a small community and set to work. Two weeks later, the coastline was clean.
Longer term, however, Barth says the port layout will need to be reconsidered. For example, fishing infrastructure has traditionally been located near water. But that calculation has changed.
“It makes no sense to reconstruct all these stages and fill them with nets,” he says. “If the same thing happens in two years”
Robbie Moore spent a week getting his oyster farm ready as Hurricane Fiona raged toward Prince Edward Island in late September. However, it did not escape the shock.
On September 24, Fiona crossed the Canadian Atlantic and caused a catastrophe that included two fatalities. Prince Edward Island recorded winds of 92 mph, and on the North Shore where Mr. Moore’s farm is located, the storm tore trees, shattered docks and flooded structures. A few days later, by the time he got to the farm to assess the damage, he found several sections missing.
Still, he considers himself relatively lucky. Some lost everything, and there was no way to prepare for the damage Fiona caused as much as they prepared. “There are a lot of people who are very discouraged right now,” he says.
why i wrote this
Canada has never experienced a storm as powerful as Hurricane Fiona in September. Now, like many coastal areas, Prince Edward Island is rethinking how to coexist with an unpredictable sea.
Recovery is expected to take many years. But given what Fiona has shown about the growing threat from hurricanes, a more transformative impact could still be coming. As hurricanes become more regular and imminent dangers up and down the east coast of North America, Atlantic Canada, as well as the region from the Gulf Coast to Florida to New England, will see how climate change affects people’s relationships with the sea. I’m starting to work on how to rewrite it like this.
“Photos do not do justice”
The Canadian Atlantic is accustomed to erratic weather, but Fiona has marked her departure.Past storms, such as 2019’s Hurricane Dorian, weakened before they made landfall. But Fiona retained much of its strength, making it the most powerful storm ever to hit Canada.
Adam Fennec, a climatologist at the University of Prince Edward Island, said Fiona was unprecedented, but the storm was not unexpected given stronger storms are expected in the Atlantic hurricane season. “Everything we’ve been talking about for 30 years is coming true,” he says.
Despite that consensus, Dr. Fennec has played Cassandra for years, sometimes to a skeptical public. Half a dozen years ago, when Dr. Fennec was invited to speak on coastal erosion at a cottage development on Prince Edward Island’s North Shore, he warned that a major storm could wipe out many properties. I couldn’t believe it. “Let’s say they didn’t want to sit down and talk about the possibilities,” he says.
Twelve cottages in that development were swept off the scaffolding when Fiona struck. Some were swallowed by the sea. Elsewhere, people’s year-round homes were destroyed.
But housing is not the only issue in this area, where communities have deep ties to the coast. The Canadian Atlantic is Canada’s most profitable fishing ground, operating from about 200 small ports scattered along its coastline. About three-quarters of them are influenced by Fiona in some way.
For many ports, Fiona’s destruction means costly rebuilds. But some say the reconstruction should be different.
Sean Bass was a day’s drive away when Fiona hit the southwestern coast of Newfoundland. When the extent of the damage became apparent, he loaded the truck, towed the boat, and drove across the state.
There he found a community devastated by a storm surge. At least he described a man he met in Porto aux Basques, where 80 houses were damaged, who fled out the back door as the sea approached from the front and clung to a lamppost to keep him from being swept away. .
Bath also found coastlines littered with debris. In many places, docks and fishing spots were broken like toothpicks, and fishing gear was scattered in the water. Bass and his crew, who run a marine debris removal project called the Clean His Harbor Initiative, headed to a small community called Burnt His Island to get to work.
After two weeks with 40 ships, the coastline was cleared, but it was only a small part of a large area. “It’s overwhelming,” says Barth. “The pictures don’t do it justice.” And he is concerned that there are more than 1,000 fishing nets drifting along the bottom of the affected harbor. Urgent action is needed to remove nets from the water before they undermine the fisheries of the world.
Longer term, however, Barth says the port layout will need to be reconsidered. Fishing infrastructure has traditionally been located near water. But that calculation has changed.
“If the same thing happens two years later, there is no point in rebuilding and netting all these stages,” he says. “It is no longer reasonable to leave your fishing tackle at the water’s edge.”
“The current island is different”
These harbors aren’t the only landscape that might change after Fiona. I noticed that the dunes had completely disappeared.
For Prince Edward Island musician Tara McLean, who grew up playing in the dunes, the shock of seeing a beloved landscape suddenly disappear is indescribable. “I can’t imagine a place more sacred to Prince Edward Islanders than the coastline,” she says.
Dunes are naturally dynamic ecosystems. Given the time, and the right conditions, they could come back. But McLean worries that the dunes may never return, given how Fiona predicts storms ahead. I don’t think I touched it,” she says. “The only way I know how to do it is to come to terms with that feeling and learn to accept that the island is different.”
McLean said grief over what was lost should be a wake-up call about the risks climate change poses to the region. But it’s also our emotional connection to water that makes it difficult to change our relationship with it. When things return to normal, the lure of living close to water can return as well.
Several Atlantic states have already taken measures to prevent it. In Nova Scotia, the provincial government was the first in Canada to pass a law about how close people can be to water. The regulation is due to come into force in his 2023. Proponents believe Fiona is why other Atlantic states should follow suit.
In the meantime, even existing settlements may eventually need to be moved. Kate Schellen, a social scientist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, says that for years, the idea of a controlled retreat — turning back from the water — was Canada’s third rail. Fiona changed that. “Waste of money aside, it would no longer seem ethical to put people in a path that is clearly harmful.”
In Canada, very little insurance is available for coastal flooding. This means that the vast majority of people whose homes were affected by storm surges are not compensated for the damage. The insurance industry is currently in discussions with the federal government, as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, for a nationwide public-private flood insurance program. But Dr Shellen says any policy should encourage communities to grapple with increasing coastal variability, rather than clinging to a reality that no longer exists.
“We’ve been building and living on top of this rented space,” she says. “When these events occur, we need programs that can intervene to help people make decisions other than putting them back in place.”
“You can’t control water”
Some are already thinking about changing jobs.
Rita Raymond grew up in St. Vincent on the east coast of Newfoundland. That side of the state largely escaped Fiona’s impact, but nevertheless, severe storms became more frequent, often washing away the community’s highways. But after returning to the area 14 years ago, Raymond’s perception of life on the coast has changed.
She says she didn’t see the ocean as a threat when she and her husband bought the house five minutes from the beach. Now, unlike tourists who stay at bed and breakfasts because they want to be closer to the water, Raymond says he wants to go farther away.
“In British Columbia, there was a danger of fire in the summer and a fear of fire. “But you can’t control water.”
Raymond says he’s considering buying on higher ground or moving to another community.
However, it may not be possible to move depending on the location.
On the North Shore of Prince Edward Island, Moore said he spoke with an oyster farmer. Moore himself faces uncertainties ahead. It takes the oysters about eight years to reach full size, well beyond the intervals of recent hurricanes. Still, he says he plans to make changes to meet the worsening storm threat, but there’s only so much he can do: He has a farming plan, and he’s almost a century old. There is an oyster wreath that has existed across and is bound to its perimeter.
“Your hands are kind of tied, aren’t they?” he says. “Something could happen at any time and you can’t try to rebuild.”
