For the ages

by Rupert Jannasch

Several weeks after what many call a one-in-a-thousand-year storm, it is still hard to grasp the full scale of the West Hants flood disaster. It all started without warning. The July 21-22 weather forecast for this part of Nova Scotia was wet but benign. What followed was an epic thunderstorm, with fork lightning styled after a horror movie. And there came rain. In just hours, several hydroelectric dams were at risk of breaching, and the first of a string of evacuation alerts was sent. The trouble was, chronic gaps in local cellphone coverage meant some residents didn’t receive the message.

Early next morning at the store in Centre Burlington, a community on the fringe of the storm’s track, people shared what they knew. No one realized that as they spoke, roads, bridges, and houses were being flooded just a few kilometers away. With only 100 millimetres of rain falling at my place in Summerville, just to the north, the downpour seemed like just another stormy night. But around Brooklyn, Ellershouse, and Windsor, some 250-300 millimetres fell. As the day progressed, stories emerged about houses moved off their foundations, heroic rescues, and – most tragically – the loss of human life.

Four people, including two children, were swept away in vehicles intended to take them to safety. Officially, they became missing persons – but the entire community feared the worst. As the search dragged on, much of it through murky water and treacherous ditches bisecting the fields behind the dykes, their fate became all the more heart-wrenching. Sincere condolences extended to the victims’ families somehow fell short of expressing the sorrow and grief felt across the region.

The search was coordinated from an RCMP command centre next to the Tidal Bore Farm Market on Highway 14. The terrible irony was that this location is notorious for poor cell service. Barely three weeks earlier, West Hants council had demanded that those with authority immediately eliminate the dead zones at this and other locations across the municipality. Bell Canada acknowledged the problem, at least, by delivering a portable booster station to help get cellphones up and running. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was unimpressed, and called on telecommunications companies to get their act together. Just steps away from the command centre, her own phone had no signal.

West Hants is certainly not the first community to experience a devastating flood, but witnessing the damage first-hand – seeing people’s belongings spread out on lawns to dry (or not) – leaves a deeper impression than watching the television news. Confronting raw emotions face-to-face also has a powerful effect. For some, it was a desperate need to tell their story. One store clerk confessed that most days she was in tears herself after comforting her customers.

Anger sometimes surfaced among those who thought the emergency response was too slow. Others became frustrated and lost their sense of reason – like the man who lashed out at weather forecasters and scientists for not doing their job, and then accused public officials of making indefensible statements about the climate. And there remains a fear, particularly in low-lying places such as Windsor, that the whole disaster could happen again.

The events took an enormous toll on first responders and search-and-rescue crews. Apart from confronting their own fatigue, injuries, and even nagging feelings of helplessness, they were exposed to the witless critics on Facebook, eager to trash emergency efforts. Firefighters realized that training in water rescue, and having well-equipped boats, did not prepare them for working in active flood conditions. As one chief remarked, it was a shock to see that as little as six inches of water running swiftly down a roadway could be enough to sweep a person away.

In an already monsoon-like summer, farmers faced more losses from the July flood. Some lost cattle; others had most of their winter feed destroyed. Standing hay was left coated in silt, making it more or less inedible. When a government road washed out, one fellow found about 1,500 tonnes of rock neatly collected in his uninsured corn field – leaving him wondering who should bear the loss. In some places, the force of the high tide moving upriver against the floodwaters spilled seawater over the dykes and onto fields, resulting in salt contamination of the soil, which could prove to be very costly.

Apiarists lost entire bee yards to the water, with hundreds of hives landing miles away – sometimes intact, but lifeless. They face a unique problem, because compensation programs for farmers are usually tied to land ownership or formal lease agreements. In the bee business, most hives are placed on another landowner’s property on the basis of a handshake and a gift of honey around Christmastime. Can an exception be made for this critical link in the food chain?

A Town Hall meeting was organized by the Hants County Federation of Agriculture, to assess losses and help farmers access emergency support. One asked how his losses from “the big flood” could be separated from the effects of bad weather in the following weeks. Some places suffered more damage from several 100-millimetre-plus rainstorms in late July and early August than from the earlier storm that made headlines.

At the same meeting, the management of dykes and dykelands came under scrutiny for all the wrong reasons. Rather than hold back the sea as intended, some dykes acted as barriers to drainage from inland flooding. After huge lakes formed and refused to drain, questions were raised as to whether enough working aboiteaux existed to drain water quickly when necessary, or if the gates already in place were adequately maintained. Suspicion arose that the province was ignoring maintenance to save money. This theory gained traction when some landowners reported that the government was offering to buy their dykeland with the intention of letting it revert to marsh.

Needless to say, farmers expect to be consulted about any plans for converting arable land into wetlands designed for flood protection. What’s more, the province has never come clean on its intentions. At the Town Hall session, Agriculture Minister Greg Morrow raised eyebrows with his baffling inability to state the government’s position on this matter.

There are hopes, and undoubtedly prayers, that the worst of the rainstorms are over with for now – but as this issue of Rural Delivery goes to press, the forecast is calling for another 40-80 millimetres, and the first drops are falling. The past year has brought us a significant hurricane, a chilling polar vortex, devastating wildfires, and now this wet summer. People are asking, “What’s next?” Perhaps serious reflection on the flood and its aftermath will help us navigate a path forward. There is certainty now that our weather will remain erratic in the coming years, and that we must adapt. The only predictable part of the climate mess is that, when push comes to shove, our communities and neighbours will be essential in getting us over the hump.

(Rupert Jannasch operates a mixed farm in Summerville, N.S., and represents the Hants Shore as councillor in the West Hants Regional Municipality.)