'We have to be stronger than this storm' says Channel-Port aux Basques mayor, one week after Fiona

One week ago, post-tropical storm Fiona smashed into Newfoundland's south coast, destroying dozens of homes, uprooting lives and leaving one person dead.

Port aux Basques bore the brunt of Fiona, and now, one week later, residents are beginning to pick up the pieces.

In an interview with CBC News, Channel-Port aux Basques Mayor Brian Button discusses the surreal week he's had since the storm, and looks to the future as the town cleans up and rebuilds.

The discussion has been edited for length and clarity.

What's the latest with the the cleanup efforts in Port aux Basques?

Today was probably the first day that I've had an opportunity to get out and get around. I was just taken back today to see how far we have advanced with the cleanup in different areas of town. We still got the homes and different things that are going to have to be cleaned up in certain sections and around in our roadways and coves and different things like that. I think we've made tremendous progress.

Has everybody been able to get back and see their their home or their property?

Yeah, everyone's been able to get back into areas and have a look at their properties and view the damage. Now, we do have people that are still out of out of town, out of province, that haven't been back and haven't seen their properties other than, I guess, pictures. But other than that, most people that are here have had the opportunity to visit their property one way or the other.

The cleanup has advanced quite a bit over the past few days. What are some of the priorities going into the weekend?

We're moving to another stage tomorrow. We've got volunteers now who will be on the ground tomorrow morning starting at 9:00 a.m. We were waiting for the different things that we needed to provide to our volunteers to do this safely. As well, the military will be helping out in this. They'll be going to areas which need cleanup where we're not able to reach with the equipment, so now we need the feet on the ground.

The structural engineers are here doing work today in different locations of town; the electrical engineers are here as well. We also have people on the ground today that are looking at our infrastructure that's under pavement, getting some cameras into some of our storm sewers and those type of things so we can build back some of the roads and secure up some of those areas. There's a pretty big effort going on right now.

What area are you most focused on?

Water Street East is one of the areas where we've had to focus on now, from the structural part, the electrical part. Just doing the inspection of homes, we were able to find some issues and today we've had electrical companies that have been there now trying to correct and fix these issues so that we can restore the power. We're still down there trying to come up with ways that we get the streets open and make sure that it's open safely.

How many homes have you found so far that are either destroyed or damaged beyond repair?