
At least eight homes were reportedlySaturday’s storm brought a tsunami to the coast of southern Newfoundland.
Fiona struck Nova Scotia last week, where it caused widespread damage and knocked out power in Puerto Rico. “very extensive damage” at an airport in Sydney and cut off power for more than 415,000 of the province’s 500,000 customers.
On Sunday, more than 265,000 households in Nova Scotia were still without power, and the province’s electricity company warned the outages would persist “for multiple days.”
Fiona has been blamed for at least five deaths in the Caribbean; in Port aux Basques, Newfoundland, one woman has been listed as missing after her home was “struck by a devastating wave,” and authorities were investigating whether “she went out with the water,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police spokesperson Jolene Garland told The Washington Post Saturday late afternoon
After being rescued, another woman in the vicinity was being treated for injuries.
Port aux Basques was also where structures were seen floating out of the water during the storm.
Post-Tropical Cyclone Fiona, which was downgraded from a Category 3 hurricane, overwhelmed coastal towns in eastern Canada — flooding roadways, knocking out power and destroying buildings. https://t.co/c7JoHoFNh0 pic.twitter.com/wlM6iIPy9j
— The New York Times (@nytimes) September 24, 2022
“I’m seeing homes in the ocean,” René J. Roy, a resident of the town and editor of the local news outlet Wreckhouse Press, told the Associated Press. “I’m seeing rubble floating all over the place. It’s complete and utter destruction… It’s quite terrifying.”
Residents shared videos of the destruction via social media.
After the storm subsided in Port aux Basques, rescue workers had to also battle electrical fires.
In Halifax, Nova Scotia, Mayor Mike Savage saidOfficials had evacuated 100 people from an apartment building after the roof collapsed.
The historically low-pressure storm — the kind associated with strong winds and heavy rainfall — offered the latest sign that the human-caused climate emergency is fueling extreme weather, said 350.org co-founder and author Bill McKibben.
Fiona crashed into Canada with the lowest ever recorded barometric pressure.
This is not exactly the same earth that we were born onto. https://t.co/EuyhbqLYrJ— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) September 24, 2022
At The Conversation civil engineering professor Ryan P. Mulligan of Queen’s University in Ontario noted that the storm caused waves to reach more than 32 feet high on the Scotian Shelf off Nova Scotia, adding that “hurricanes with the size and strength of Fiona do not usually maintain their high wind speeds this far north.”
“How did Fiona get into Canadian water with such size and intensity? This is related to its heat source: the ocean,” wrote Mulligan. “Ocean warming may be linked to the increasing intensity of storms making landfall and to the development of strong hurricanes.”
“So climate change leads to warmer ocean water at higher latitudes,” he added. “A warmer future increases the probability that more intense storms will reach Canadian coasts.”
Climate scientists agree. warned, stronger hurricanes and tropical storms “what we continue seeing as a result of decades of climate damage,” said former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner.