'We have to be stronger than this storm' says Channel-Port aux Basques mayor, 1 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.

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

A: 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 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?

It's too premature to say a number, but I know that number from the get-go has grown quite a bit. The numbers that we're getting now are people are back into their properties and once they've got inside, have found a lot of other things, everything from sewage … oil, those type of things. 

We haven't even checked all areas yet. It's so broad, it encompasses so much of the area of our community. We're looking at about five per cent of our overall households in this community that have been either destroyed or will not be livable, and that was only our preliminary number. I'm worried that that number will rise. We already had a housing issue in our community, just like a lot of other communities, and now this has even escalated beyond.

What's it been like dealing with the situation over the past week?

It's been a roller-coaster. I'm not going to lie to you. I live in this community, grew up in this community. It's a small community. It's a close-knit community. Everybody knows everybody. So the emotions of all this has been something that has torn at the heartstrings quite a bit from time to time, but you're trying to keep it together. Every day ends the same way every day starts for the last week: it ends with trying to think about all the things that need to be done, all the things that we're going to be running into. 

I've had many ups and downs in here through this past week, but you got to keep going. There's a slogan that's going around now … and I think it suits it really good. It says, "Stronger Than the Storm." It's a T-shirt that I think they've developed here. I think that's what we have to be; we have to be stronger than this storm to get ourselves back on our feet.

What message do you have for the people in your community?

We've gone through the worst that any of us can imagine, for some even more than that. But together, we can pull through this. It's going to take a tremendous amount of time. It certainly is. But they need to know that there are people working on their behalf to try to get us to that point, to try to get us there, and to be able to look after each and everyone in the short term. Long-term solutions are being worked on and looked at as well. As we move through this here, our first initial thing is to look after everybody and get everybody comfortable so we know we can move to the next stages.

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