Array
Powerful storm Fiona ripped into eastern Canada on Saturday with hurricane-force winds, forcing evacuations, knocking down trees and powerlines, and reducing many homes on the coast to “just a pile of rubble in the ocean”.
The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said the centre of the storm, downgraded to post-tropical cyclone Fiona, had reached the Gulf of St Lawrence after racing through Nova Scotia.
After taking its toll on Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island (PEI), the storm battered Newfoundland and Eastern Quebec, but is now likely to weaken, the NHC said.
Port aux Basques, on the south-west tip of Newfoundland with a population of 4,067, declared a state of emergency and evacuated parts of the town that had suffered flooding and road washouts, according to mayor Brian Button.
Several homes and an apartment building were dragged out to sea, Rene Roy, editor-in-chief of Wreckhouse Weekly in Port aux Basques, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
“This is hands down the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Roy said, describing many homes as “just a pile of rubble in the ocean right now”.
He added: “There is an apartment building that’s literally gone. There are entire streets that are gone.”
Police are investigating whether a woman had been swept to sea, CBC reported.
“We’ve gone through a very difficult morning,” Button said in a Facebook video, adding that the evacuations had been completed.
