Nova Scotia launches advertisement campaign warning people to prepare for hurricanes

CITYnewshalifax\ By Marlo Glass, The Canadian Press

HALIFAX — The Nova Scotia government is launching an advertising campaign urging residents to prepare for hurricane season, as meteorologists monitor a tropical storm that could pick up steam as it moves up the Atlantic coast.

John Lohr, minister responsible for the Emergency Management Office, says the campaign will include radio, print and online ads over the next four weeks. Nova Scotians should prepare for hurricanes by putting together an emergency kit with food, water, medications and important documents, he told a news conference Thursday.

“Each of us has a role to play in planning for and preparing for storms and hurricanes,” he said.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted a busy hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean.

Nova Scotia is still repairing some damaged roads and bridges after a one-in-1,000-year storm dumped three months’ worth of rain onto central Nova Scotia over the course of a few hours in July. Four people, including two six-year-olds, were swept away in floodwaters and died.

Bob Robichaud, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, says tropical storm Franklin is currently in Bermuda and picking up steam as it moves toward the northeast. Franklin made landfall in the Dominican Republic earlier this week, causing heavy floods and landslides that killed at least one person.

“We expect the storm should enter our response zone early next week,” Robichaud told reporters Thursday.

The storm will then “make another right-hand turn toward the northeast,” which will determine if the weather system makes landfall over Atlantic Canada. Currently, Robichaud said, most models predict the centre of the storm will stay over the North Atlantic, but “Newfoundland is still in play for landfall.”

He cautioned that at this point “everything is still on the table.”

Forecasts indicate the storm won’t bring a “Fiona-type scenario,” Robichaud said, as most models predict Franklin to weaken once it gets to Atlantic Canada. But he added, “any storm this time of year is one we have to watch closely.”

Parts of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland were battered by post-tropical storm Fiona last September. The storm claimed three lives, destroyed homes and caused widespread power outages. It was the costliest storm to ever hit the Atlantic region, with the Insurance Bureau of Canada estimating more than $800 million in insured damages.

Matt Drover, senior director of energy delivery with Nova Scotia Power, said every storm impacts the province differently. The energy utility is focusing on clearing trees away from power poles and lines to reduce the likelihood of downed trees causing outages, he said.

Nova Scotia Power is also “storm-hardening” susceptible areas like Cape Breton, he said, by taking some power lines out of the woods and moving them closer to highways, as well as installing larger, taller power poles to withstand high winds.

“That will not eliminate outages,” Drover said. “There will still be outages that occur from trees, but we’re doing everything we can to reduce those, especially in those hardest-hit areas.”

Hurricane season officially runs from June through November, when the waters of the Atlantic Ocean are warm enough to produce a tropical cyclone.

When asked how the province is preparing for hurricane season, Lohr said the emergency management office is regularly in contact with municipalities and other government departments.

Claudia Chender, leader of Nova Scotia’s NDP, said she is concerned about the lack of details shared on Thursday about the province’s emergency preparedness.

“I think today we learned a lot about what Nova Scotians could do,” she told reporters. “I think we want to hear about what’s being done to help Nova Scotians, and we didn’t hear that today.”

She said the government should say how it is addressing cellphone “dead zones” across the province, a prominent issue during the July floods.

“In case of emergency, even if there are alerts, those alerts aren’t going to come through if you don’t have cell service,” she said. “And that is increasingly a safety issue for many people in rural Nova Scotia.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 24, 2023.

— With files from The Associated Press.

Marlo Glass, The Canadian Press