Cleanup efforts are underway on Tuesday after damaging winds tore through the province.
Southwestern New Brunswick appears to have seen some of the worst damage from Monday’s storm.
Jason Gaudet, CAO of Eastern Charlotte, said the impact was worse than they had expected.
“We’re seeing some very large damage areas in Blacks Harbour, in and around Beaver Harbour and Back Bay as well,” Gaudet said in an interview Tuesday morning.
“We’re seeing everything from just trees on lines to telephone poles that are snapped in half and a number of them in one stretch.”
Gaudet said municipal officials initially thought the storm had gone around the community, with very little impact during much of the day Monday.
But he said the winds picked up around 4 p.m., and within an hour, they were seeing widespread power outages.
“We are seeing a lot of personal property damage with roofs, several sheds that were blown over,” said Gaudet.
The CAO is encouraging residents to avoid any non-essential travel so crews can work to clean up the mess.
Damage from yesterday’s storm. Some roads still impassable. Wide spread outage across Eastern Charlotte; many broken power poles broke. #nbstorm pic.twitter.com/L0j1lGtGhq
— Jason N. Gaudet (@JasonGaudet) December 19, 2023
Meanwhile, over on Grand Manan Island, Mayor Bonnie Morse said they fared pretty well all things considered.
“We were fortunate that the highest winds didn’t hit at high tide because certainly at the high tide in mid-afternoon, when the winds were already pretty strong, you could see a lot of waves coming over the top of wharves, coming up on shore,” said Morse.
Morse said the bulk of the island lost power by around 5:30 p.m. Monday but most had their power restored by later in the evening.
Based on what she has seen, the mayor said the damage from this storm was worse than during hurricane Lee in September.
“We didn’t lose power as long as we did certainly yesterday. There seems to be just more damage around people’s properties,” said Morse.
Both Morse and Gaudet praised the work of their local fire departments and public works crews throughout the storm.
High tide on #GrandManan: waves are overtopping wave breaks and wharves. #NBStorm pic.twitter.com/UPQOUPqDwx
— Bonnie Morse (@bhmorse) December 18, 2023
