Saint Andrews could see high wind gusts, lots of rain and flooding with this weekend’s storm, but preparations are well underway.
“It’s an evolving situation where the eye of the storm has kind of been moving to the east and west. It does look like the eye of the storm is a little bit more east which means that we’ll probably see more significant rainfall as a result. Winds are still expected to be anywhere from 75 to 100 kilometres an hour,” says Mayor Brad Andrews.
He adds as the storm moves up the Bay of Fundy, if the wind hits during a high tide, that could cause problems with erosion situations and washout flooding in areas like Market Square.
But he says there’s a sense of calm amongst the residents, “If you look outside, it actually looks like a beautiful Friday afternoon. The sun is shining and if you didn’t know any better, you would think you’re going into a very nice weekend. Most people are getting their emergency kits ready, and you’re seeing a lot of people out on their properties, putting away chairs. Overall the community is relatively normal, with the exception of a heavier presence of media vehicles in town today,” Henderson said.
This isn’t the first emergency situation Henderson has dealt with in the town in 2023. In May, evacuations were ordered due to a forest fire.
Henderson says he can’t remember the last time the community ever had two emergency situations in one year.
“I was overwhelmed by the response of the community and how organized it was and overall how the communication strategy went, but we also realized some key things when it comes to doing emergency preparations. When you have all these people coming to the W.C. O’Neill Arena as your emergency centre, they’re coming with their animals. So how do you separate the cats from the dogs? Just a fun random example, but overall, there are some real communication messages that we learned, including how do we coordinate with EMO, and what is our plan with communicating with the public?” Henderson stated.
He adds the advantage of Hurricane Lee is you can actually see it coming and track it, but with the forest fire, it just happened with no indication.
