Posted on 09/30/2003 7:37:58 AM PDT by mitchbert
Friends, buddies, pals...fellow ne'er do wells....I'm sending this out as newsletter instead of doing it several times over...
The last couple of days have been quite remarkable here...I have experienced many violent storms here on the coast..but Sunday night was a truly humbling experience. Myself and 20 odd guys from the club decided to spend the night on our boats at the club. The early evening hours were quite festive..beer, pizza...a good time was had by all.
Then Juan showed up. With a vengance.
By 10 oclock the wind was up to 80 MPH..bringing with it a massive amount of rain. The rain and wind astonishingly comtinued to build for the next couple of hours. 11 pm was high tide..and with the storm surge the club was cutoff from the mainland. At midnight one of our storm strengthened docks broke loose taking 6 or 8 boats with it...the owners had to swim for it..thankfully we managed to get all of them out of the water, otherwise...............For those of you who know Armdale the entire island was awash from the storm surge--except for the little hill that the clubhouse sits on. I was stranded on my particular dock, since the gangways had long since been washed away by the storm surge. At 1:30 or so I decided to put out one more heavy duty line onto my bow....as I tried to attach it I had to look into the wind..but couldnt--the 120mph gusts turned the rain into gravel and it was impossible to see. From that point on there was nothing to do but retreat into the boat and hope for the best.
When the storm abated somewhat around 2:30, we emerged to the familiar scenes that you have seen on CNN--only this was no Third World banana republic...but Halifax. A dozen or so of our boats had broken loose of their mooring and are now well up on the very expensive lawns of the citys toniest neighbourhoods...many had dragged together, bashing holes in each other.
Myself and a number of fellow owners manned the workboats and spent the rest of the night pulling boats off the beach before the tide went out, separating clumps so that the tide wouldnt cause more damage. It was a long sickening night.
We were relatively ok..the small boat clubs throughout the city were wiped out. The mooring field filled with pretty little daysailers across the channel is gone. St Marys Boat Club lost every single dinghy it owns--sunk or smashed to pieces on the rocks.
The city is still without power with hundreds of the beautiful old maple and oak trees uprooted and lying across powerlines. It'll be awhile before things are back to normal
Thats it kids...
But not from the media! What a difference a few miles makes - we heard about Isabel for almost 2 weeks straight here in the U.S., and heard about Juan for about 2 minutes total.
Surprising isn't it? After some 10 to 12 days of comprehensive hourly updates on Isabel we hear little or nothing about hurricane Juan ... until it hits. Remarkable ... is it another Bush conspiracy? After all we know Bush can barely tolerate Canada's PM Chretien.
I'll update as I get more info.
And I'd bet fully half (I'm being conservative here) of Americans couldn't locate Nova Scotia on a map.
Hope your Mom's okay...I haven't caught wind of any major disruptions other than some maina damage and such around Charlettown. If it was much worse we would have probably heard.
HALIFAX (CP) - Residents of Halifax were urged to stay off the streets Tuesday as work crews and military personnel attempted to clear the wreckage from hurricane Juan.
Thousands of trees and tree branches were still clogging city streets, disrupting power lines and keeping about 100,000 people without power for a second day.
Local schools and universities remained closed, but transit buses and the ferries across the harbour went back into service, and parts of the downtown had power.
Premier John Hamm said the storm's strength took him aback.
"The storm was perhaps more severe than the weather man had predicted," he said.
"We had what was a level 1 storm but we had level 3 damage."
The category 1 hurricane - the weakest rating on the Saffir-Simpson scale - was downgraded to a tropical storm shortly after making landfall in the Halifax area.
Still, its ferocity impressed Haligonians, who weathered a less-severe hurricane Hortense in 1996 and normally regard the usual series of fall storms with almost jaded contempt.
Before moving off through central Nova Scotia and into P.E.I. Juan ripped power lines from poles and blew hundreds of transformers, leaving 300,000 people in a blackout on Monday night.
At least 300 soldiers from Canadian Forces Base Gagetown in New Brunswick arrived Tuesday to aid in the cleanup effort.
The work was expected to take weeks and officials had yet to compile a damage estimate.
Officials warned it could be at least Thursday before it was completely restored.
In many neighbourhoods, the scene was more like a jungle than a modern urban setting as branches blocked roads and large trees wrenched from the ground leaned against houses. Everywhere, wet leaves plastered cars and buildings like splattered paint.
Along Halifax's touristy waterfront, people walked on damaged boardwalks and wharfs littered with crumbled Styrofoam, shards of wood and starfish hurled from the harbour by the hurricane's force.
At least three people were killed in the storm, which hit land shortly after midnight and roared over the Nova Scotia capital with gusts reaching 140 kilometres an hour.
John Rossiter, a 31-year-old paramedic, died when a tree fell on an ambulance in Halifax.
Two other unidentified people were killed in separate incidents in Enfield, N.S., and Hantsport, N.S., when trees crushed their cars.
Two fishermen from Caraquet, N.B., disappeared when a boat carrying a load of wood was swamped off Quebec's Anticosti Island. The boat's captain was able to get to shore safely, but there was no sign of the others.
Heavy rain washed out train tracks and caused a 10-car derailment in Dartmouth, N.S.
Residents were warned to avoid drooping power cables.
"There is a real danger posed by downed power lines," said Margaret Murphy, spokeswoman for Nova Scotia Power. "It's going to take time to reach the homes and businesses affected."
Fierce winds tore up an apartment building's roof and collapsed a firewall in a hallway in Dartmouth, temporarily trapping three people inside. No one was injured.
The remnants of Juan uprooted trees in Truro, N.S., and in Prince Edward Island, where winds downed more trees and power lines in the province's capital. At least 10 boats at a Charlottetown yacht club were sunk.
The provincial election on P.E.I. went ahead Monday despite the storm and 83 per cent of the electorate cast their ballots.
Island Premier Pat Binns, who won a third majority, voted near his home in Murray River in a polling station lit by a single bulb powered by a generator.
Gee. Imagine that! Americans being interested in news about Americans. What a bunch of stupid selfish louts we must appear to enlightened world citizens like you.
And as for my other comment, I hope you don't think it a good thing that Americans are ignorant of basic geography. Isn't that why so many at FR homeschool?
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