After Fiona, N.L. residents wait anxiously to return home — or find themselves on the demolition list

Denise Pike Anderson pointed to the back corner of her basement. 

"That's where the water came in first," she said, standing amid silt in the dark, damp remains of her Port aux Basques home last week.

Anderson is one of dozens of homeowners whose property incurred damage from post-tropical storm Fiona but wasn't carried off by the sea completely.

Her house — although filled, at one point, with a metre of seawater after a monster storm surge in September — is still standing, battered but intact.

For four weeks, she believed it might've been salvageable, hoping provincial inspectors would tell her she could return and begin repairs.

Instead, she was summoned to town hall, where officials told her that her house was now officially condemned.

"It was just a blow," she said, her voice cracking as she began to cry. "A blow to us that what we worked hard for is coming down."

Her kids, she said, wanted to fly back to Newfoundland to help the family.

"And I said, 'You can't come home,'" she recalled. "We're homeless."

Anderson was one of several homeowners who learned late last month they were now officially on the demolition list, says Channel-Port aux Basques Mayor Brian Button.

"It's been weeks of inspections, from structural to health," Button said in an interview last week.

As people arrived to learn the fate of their homes, some of them broke down sobbing.

"It was pretty emotional at times here," he said.

Almost 100 homes in the area were destroyed to the point of being uninhabitable, according to the provincial count in the days following Fiona.