After second summer of fatal flooding, some say Nova Scotia is still not prepared
CTV
The second bout of deadly flooding in as many years has some Nova Scotia residents and municipal leaders saying it's time for the provincial government to accept that extreme weather is the new normal and make sure people have the tools they need to stay safe.
The second bout of deadly flooding in as many years has some Nova Scotia residents and municipal leaders saying it's time for the provincial government to accept that extreme weather is the new normal and make sure people have the tools they need to stay safe.
In Kings County, Coun. Dick Killam said the provincial government denied funding to his community twice in the past four years that would have led to work that would have shored up his community better to withstand Thursday's torrential rains.
And the first-ever manager of the Canadian Hurricane Centre said it's well past time for Nova Scotia to built a robust prediction, detection and alert system for flash flooding.
"The system makes it really difficult to provide advance warning," said Jim Abraham, who is also a retired Environment Canada meteorologist. "If the province, who's responsible for flood warnings or alerting, doesn't have the infrastructure to detect and predict -- if there isn't even such an official thing as a flood warning program -- then, of course, it's going to take longer."
The tail end of hurricane Beryl doused parts of western and central Nova Scotia with more than 100 millimetres of rain in just a few hours on Thursday. Roads and homes were flooded across an area stretching from Digby to Guysborough, Environment Canada said.
A young person died after they were swept into a ditch overflowing with rushing floodwaters in Wolfville, about 95 kilometres northeast of Halifax. RCMP said they got a call about the youth disappearing under the rushing water at about 7:30 p.m.
The province's Emergency Management Office issued flash flood alerts in four counties about an hour later. The alerts did not ask people to shelter in place.