Ignored warnings a worry for HRM’s emergency management official
Posted Sep 24, 2020 04:20:00 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Reports of parents bringing their children out to Lawrencetown Beach and Peggys Cove to watch the waves from Teddy worries Erica Fleck.
“That was a huge concern for me, it's the one thing that keeps me up at night,” said the district chief of emergency management for Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency.
Prior to the arrival of the post-tropical storm, officials had pleaded with Nova Scotians to stay away from the shoreline. A storm surge warning had been issued with 10-metre waves in the forecast.
“We've lost a lot of people who have gone to the coastline to watch those waves, and that's what we need to avoid,” the Canadian Hurricane Centre's Bob Robichaud said at a provincial preparedness briefing on Tuesday.
According to preliminary information released by Environment Canada, a buoy at La Have Bank registered a 12.8-metre wave.
In the Halifax area, we got around 90 mm of rain and wind gusts of about 70 km/h during Teddy's visit.
Fleck said we had downed branches and localized flooding — including one spot that resulted in a three-vehicle crash on Highway 103 — but we were “extremely lucky” to not have any significant damage in HRM.
She was happy to see election signs come down and yards get clean up leading up to the storm, but because conditions weren't worse, she's concerned people are going to be complacent if another tropical system comes our way in 2020.
“This was a weird storm that had effects for 18 to 30 hours over Nova Scotia … that rain and wind lasted extended periods but we didn't get the huge peaks, and people think 'why did I bother,'” she told NEWS 95.7's The Rick Howe Show
“You can't guess on mother nature sometimes and if that band would have moved just slightly to the left to come inland it could have been 100 times worse.”
This year is on track to be the most active Atlantic hurricane season on record. We've already gone through the list of designated names and have had to resort to using the Greek alphabet.
The only other year that has happened was in 2005 when six Greek letters were used.
This year, we've already reached the second Greek letter. The 2020 version of Beta formed 34 days before the 2005 storm with the same name.
Although it's currently fairly quiet in the Atlantic, hurricane season doesn't end until Nov. 30.
