Hurricane Fiona hit the Atlantic coast of Canada on Saturday. More than 500,000 homes are without electricity, according to operators.
Nova Scotia Power, which supplies the province of Nova Scotia, where the storm made landfall in the morning, with winds above 144 kph, for example, reported more than 400,000 customers without electricity around 2:00 p.m. GMT ( 4 p.m. in Switzerland).
In the two other most affected provinces, the Prince Edward Island operator counted a little earlier 82,000 households cut off from the network, and that of New Brunswick 44,000.
Expected ‘significant impacts’
The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned of this ‘powerful hurricane-force cyclone’, adding: ‘significant impacts are expected due to high winds, storm surge and heavy rains’. Canada has issued several weather warnings for most of its eastern coasts.
In its last bulletin published at 11:45 a.m. GMT (1:45 p.m. in Switzerland), the Canadian Hurricane Center (CHCO) evokes winds of approximately 130 km/h in Nova Scotia, and notes that Fiona is moving at a speed of 55 km/h to the north-northeast.
“Big waves have reached the eastern shore of Nova Scotia and southwestern Newfoundland, and they could exceed 12 meters,” he also communicates.
The American NHC told him that at 1:00 p.m. GMT (3:00 p.m. in Switzerland) the eye of the hurricane was above the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
‘Never seen’
“We have never seen such weather conditions,” police in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, said on Twitter. “It’s incredible, there is no electricity, no wifi, no network,” confirmed the mayor of the city, Philip Brown, on the public channel Radio-Canada. “A lot of trees have fallen, there is a lot of flooding on the roads,” he added.
“It will certainly be a historic and extreme event for eastern Canada,” warned Bob Robichaud, meteorologist with the CCPO, at a press conference on Friday.
Authorities in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia have asked everyone to stay indoors and pack enough supplies for at least 72 hours. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has asked everyone to ‘take the right precautions’.
In Halifax, stores ran out of propane gas refills for camping as locals rushed to stock up.
‘Nothing serious’ in Bermuda
Fiona passed some 100 miles off Bermuda on Friday after wreaking havoc in the Caribbean. The hurricane inflicted gusts at 160 km / h and heavy rains on this British territory of some 64,000 inhabitants located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean but without any casualties or major damage being reported.
Residents posted images of flooding and downed power lines on social media. “We had some small damage to our premises, but nothing serious,” Jason Rainer, owner of a souvenir shop in the capital Hamilton, told AFP, stressing that a few doors and windows had been torn off.
/ATS