In the days leading up to her arrival I tried to avoid the news and the weather. I studiously turned off the radio whenever a weather report was forthcoming and I resisted the urge to scroll through Facebook where every newsfeed was plastered with posts tracking her path: Fiona, a category-2 hurricane that was expected to make landfall near my house in rural Nova Scotia.
People always think they want ocean views and seaside properties but having grown up with a strong respect for the power of the ocean and having lived through the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004—the one thing I knew I didn’t want when buying a house was direct access to the sea.
I live in the seaside community where I grew up on the Atlantic Ocean. My childhood was filled with days at the beach where my mother would open our front door to call us home for supper. We saw many storms and the damage they could do. A dory flung into a tree, salt spray that had to be scraped off the windows after a gale—but never had we seen anything like what was predicted for this past weekend, not in living memory.
The Saxby Gale of 1869 would have been the last similar event although there was a storm my grandmother had told me about, which had hit the shore when she was a girl, that carried off outhouses and chicken coops.
All the big storms I knew of as a child happened offshore although the remnants of the impact did wash up on the beach. In 1982 debris from the Ocean Ranger disaster arrived, a cyclone sank the drilling rig off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, killing all 84 crew that were aboard. I have a memory that my father found a life preserver from the rig on the beach.
As people of the sea, we are wary and respectful of it. As Fiona headed up the coast, I watched as boats were pulled from the water and moved to safety, floating docks were hauled in, putting an end to what was a glorious recreational boating season. I cleared my yard of moveable debris, secured my barn doors and took a last walk on the beach to capture the lay of the land before the storm came and rearranged the furniture.
Being in the path of a natural disaster is never fun—I can attest to that as I have been within reach of tsunamis, tornadoes, and earthquakes—but hurricanes are the most impactful psychologically as you spend days on edge waiting for the hammer to fall. By Friday afternoon, there was a freight train trying to rip my face off my skull—my headache was so severe I could barely function but still managed to do my job; attended a press conference and wrote the necessary news copy afterwards. Work was good for me. Gave me something else to focus on as my anxiety level skyrocketed.
Friday night my housemates, aka my teenaged children, retreated to their various corners in our centuries-old home. Living in such an old house—it was built in 1845—has its pros and cons when you’re facing down a hurricane. On the plus-side, it’s still standing. It survived the Saxby Gale and a hundred other storms since then. But then again, the old girl has seen a lot, and maybe she’s worn out, maybe the nails holding the roof on have seen one too many wind storms. Even without hurricane-force winds this ancient lady tends to shed a few clothes with every nor-easter-- a drainpipe, a window—I had reason to worry.
I watched a stupid movie while I waited for doom. I’ll probably always love Kevin Hart and Mark Wahlberg for taking my mind off the potential destruction of my house for an hour and half that night.
Then I talked with a friend on the phone until 11:30 while the wind and rain started to pick up. Putting down the phone, and finally allowing myself to look at the weather report, I knew, we were now in the heart of the storm, the highest winds and rains forecasted had arrived.
I settled in and most of my anxiety melted away as the house held and the basement was dry. I nestled into my bed for the night, plugged my earbuds into my head and streamed the audiobook I had downloaded for the occasion—Bill Bryson’s At Home which seemed very appropriate for the occasion.
Somehow, I fell asleep before the power went off at midnight and did not wake up again until just after 7 a.m. Saturday morning.
The winds were still high. And were expected to stay that way for most of the day. The power was out, as expected, but as I took my very small dogs out for their first bathroom break of the day, the house and surrounding property looked good. No trees were down, the power lines were holding, shingles were all still in place as were drainpipes and the heat pump.
But caution remained the watchword of the day. We took the dogs outside through the back door, where no power lines were located, and we stayed as far away from trees as possible.
During the second out of the day, I saw one of our smaller trees had come down and fallen across the neighbouring driveway. It could be easily moved but served as a reminder that even though the worst part of the storm was over, damage could still occur.
With the wind still moderately high, my daughter and I built a small fortress to shelter our camp stove as we attempted to make some hot food for supper. Luckily we had a pile of stack stone on hand for the retaining wall we are in the process of making, and it was easily repurposed.
Tea was made, canned soup was heated and cold, pre-cooked noodles were refreshed with a shot of boiling water. We carried our outside cookery to the inside table and sat down to our small comforts. That’s when the hum of the fridge kicked in, the clock on the stove began to blink and power returned to our home.
Since that time we have maintained power but for a brief blip, this while some parts of the province are not expected to get power back for at least a week after the storm. It’s taken a lot of work to get the grid up and Nova Scotians are thankful for power crews that have come to our province from outside of our borders; provincial and national.
For the time being we are living in a very small pocket of the province where internet has not been restored which makes life uncomfortable and business almost impossible. Somehow, through almost impossible odds, we managed to get the newspaper out only a few hours late.
Many parts of the province will need months to recover from the damage of Hurricane Fiona. We were lucky. And we know it.
