We’re Fine
September 26, 2022 by Dave Haynes
It was very nice and kind to get all kinds of emails ahead of and after the hurricane that whacked Atlantic Canada this weekend – with “Good Luck!” wishes and hopes that our place in Halifax came out unscathed.
One industry friend suggested I put up a post with an All Clear note, because a lot of readers know that I live in Nova Scotia, which Hurricane Fiona tracked through on Saturday night. It had Category 2 strength when it arrived. This feels a little self-indulgent, but here goes …
We’re fine. House is fine. We lost an old honeysuckle bush that uprooted, and a spruce tree, and some of the big, leafy old oaks around the property were shredded, a bit, by 120 km/h+ winds, but that’s about it. Didn’t even need my chainsaw!
I went for overkill when I put up a metal gazebo on a pad in the back, and aircraft-cabled the posts to rebar pounded into the ground. Glad I did, as I think the unit would have taken flight. Instead, it shifted a couple of inches.
We bought a big-ass generator after the last hurricane to come through left us without power for 28 hours. This time, power was out 41 hours, but I was able to find open gas stations and keep the “genny” running except overnights.
We were lucky. So were the kids and their houses. But a hell of a lot of people up here – especially in Cape Breton at the north end of the province, Prince Edward Island and the SW corner of Newfoundland – got hammered. Houses on an outport’s shoreline were swept out to sea. Lotsa trees were uprooted around Halifax. Power poles snapped along roadways, like this one (pic at top of post) in nearby Dartmouth. We’re in a heavily-wooded development outside the city-proper, but as far as I can tell the great, great majority of all those trees around us stayed vertical and kept their branches.
Thank you for the concern. Worries should now turn to Florida, with Ian likely to whack the west coast – where companies like Spectrio, Real Digital Media, Instore Screens and several others are located. The good news there is hurricanes are pretty much annual events, so they’re better set up for them. Stay safe down there!
Now back to my 2nd week off!
Photo is from Joshawa Tyler LaVoie, off CBC online site. It’s a street in Dartmouth, across the harbor from Halifax.
Glad you and your loved ones are OK.
Glad to hear it wasn’t as bad as it might have been!
Bad form sending this storm up to Nova Scotia from here in the South East US. Will have a very strong word with “Ian” which is about to pummel us to ensure he does not replicate such bad behaviour. Delighted you stayed safe.