White Juan - The Day After

Well it's Day #2 of a state of emergency.  I heard on the radio this morning that the grand total for snow in Metro Halifax was 85cms.  I heard that other areas of Nova Scotia received over 100cms.  This was record-setting snowfall.  Below are some pics from this morning, which is a bright, sunny, but very windy day.

No plows have ventured onto our street yet, and it's now noon.

View from the balcony.  The water in the background is Bedford Basin.

Simon and I went out to shovel the driveway and sidewalk.

The walkway to the flat downstairs was completely covered by a 3-4 foot drift, so Simon shovelled out the pathway for the lady that lives there.

The lady that lives downstairs and came out and helped with the shovelling too, while the two people that live upstairs never came out at all, and we were out there for hours.  They kept us awake last night fighting - yelling, banging, smashing, slamming doors, etc.  I hope they move!!!  It kind of annoyed us that they've been out of work for the past month, sit home on their butts all day and didn't even come out and help shovel.  We should have shovelled all the snow on top of their car.

Simon was also kind enough to shovel the sidewalk and walkway for the old couple who live next door.  They were completely snowed in and couldn't even open their door.

This is our balcony, and it has a roof over it.  This much snow still managed to pile up here.

I just heard on the radio that they are calling for more snow Saturday night and all day Sunday.

Our place is finally all shovelled out:

After the shovelling, Simon and I went for a walk around on our snowshoes.

We made our way towards Nanny's house.  This is Merson Avenue:

Here is Nanny's house:

There was a big drift in her driveway:

So I stood on it. :)

Her back door was snowed in again.

Here are some pics of her backyard:

Simon shovelling off the back step.

The driveway - a lot of it escaped the snow, except for the end by the sidewalk.  The house must have provided a shelter from the wind on this side.

This is looking out across the neighbour's backyard:

So after visiting with Nanny for a bit we headed for home.  Normandy in front of St.Stephen's School is a disaster.  It's a huge drift - probably 6 to 8 feet in places.  Simon stood by the fence at the yard of the school, and you can see that he's standing on top of the drift pointing to the top of the fence.

This big pile of snow is right in the middle of Normandy, right by Merson Avenue.

This is looking back down Merson Avenue:

Robie Street to Basinview Drive is another disaster area.  Huge drifts cover the street in waves all the way down.  I got a picture of a guy shovelling his driveway and sidewalk - his head is barely visible, peeking over the snow bank.

Wow, look at that.  This is going to take some big plows to clear!

Almost home:

The sunset this evening.  The word is that there is 20cms more coming Sunday.

White Juan - Storm of the Century

February 19, 2004 is a date many Nova Scotians will remember for a long time to come.  A huge snow storm has been forcasted, and it was shaping up to be the storm of the century.

We got up as usual to get ready for work.  There was already a nice blizzard underway and a lot of snow down already.  The lawyers called all the staff and told us not to come in.  We turned on the radio and started to learn how bad it really was out there.  There was already 25-30cms of snow on the ground and very high winds.  Everything was completely shut down...even the Metro Transit buses were called off the roads and that's the first time that happened in 25 years.  Highways 102 and 103 are closed.

There was a radio announcement saying that police are warning motorists to stay off the roads and that if you got in an accident your insurance may not cover you because you are taking unnecessary risks driving in these conditions.  Simon decided to put on snowshoes and walk to work.  He was probably the only one there!  The following pics were taken around 8am, and the storm was far from over.

The Province declared a State of Emergency.  My poor niece Elysia, who was living in Ontario at the time, missed out on her second State of Emergency! lol (The first one being Hurricane Juan.)  This shot of our neighbour's minivan was taken around 12:30pm, just before I head to out to my grandmother's.

This is how our car looked at 12:30pm

At 12:30pm I put my snowshoes on, put some food in a backpack (I had made chili and biscuits) and walked up to my grandmother's house who lived a few blocks away.  It was deep snow and really hard going.  When I got there she was completely snowed in.  There was a two-foot drift blocking her back door.  I shovelled out her back steps and then went to do the front.  By the time I came back around to the back door there was 2 more inches where I had shovelled before.

This was her backyard when I arrived:

This is her back door after I shovelled it.

Now I can finally get the door open!

Nanny and I had lunch together, then about 3:00 p.m. I strapped the snowshoes back on and headed for home.  By this time the wind was really picking up and the blizzard was much worse than when I walked up there.  When I left Merson Avenue and walked onto Normandy, there were huge drifts blown in from St. Stephens School.  As I walked over the drifts (which were probably waist or chest height), a big gust of wind came and blew me down.  I couldn't get up...I tried and tried but I just kept digging myself deeper into a hole.  Every time I put my arms down to try and push myself up, they just went deeper into the snow and I became even more stuck.  I finally tried rolling around and got myself out of the hole, and was able to get my feet under me and stand up.  I saw a lady standing in her living room window watching me, so if worse came to worse and I couldn't get up she knew I was there struggling and would probably have called for help.  As I struggled to get up all I could think about was one of those big snow plows coming up the street and scooping me up not realizing I was there.  Thank God that never happened.

The rest of the walk home was brutal.  The wind was fierce.  I couldn't keep my eyes open as the snow and wind combined were blinding me something terrible.  I basically walked home with my eyes closed, peeking every once in awhile to make sure I was on the right track.  I had to walk down the middle of the streets all the way home.  I was some relieved when I finally saw my house I can tell you!  Phew!  I arrived home around 4:30pm - it took me an hour and a half to walk a few blocks, which normally takes 10 or 15 minutes.

When I got in the house I called Mom and Nanny and told them I made it back home okay.  Below are some pics I took when I got home:

By the end of this storm Halifax had received approximately 95cm of snow, and weatherstations recorded wind gusts around 147 km/hr.

Please see my next blog, February 20, 2004, for "White Juan - The Aftermath" - what it looked like the day after.

Hurricane Juan - A City Blown Apart

Hurricane Juan made landfall just after midnight on September 29, 2003. I lived on Windmill Road in Dartmouth with my husband Simon at the time, in Harbourshore Acres Apartments which was right on Halifax Harbour.  Our apartment's balcony faced the harbour looking towards Bedford Basin.  This is the view from our balcony on a calm evening:

I was in bed when I was awakened by a phone call from my mother about 1am. She couldn't believe I was sleeping through a hurricane. We went out on the balcony to see the storm. Our balcony was on the lee side of the building but we could see the rain basically going horizontal over the top of the building. The harbour was in major turmoil. We could see power transformers blowing all over the city. Soon the city was dark.  The wind made the most incredible roar I've ever heard.  

About an hour into the storm I was talking to my mother on the phone again when there was a huge crash out in the hallway. The fire alarms started going off as well, and we could hear panicked voices out in the hallway. I opened the door and discovered the roof had caved in at the end of the hallway.

Our neighbour told us to get out quickly. Water pipes had broken and water was flowing down the hall into our apartment. I couldn't find the cat carrier so I put the cats in a clothes basket.  Tico, our Alexandrine Parakeet, had to stay behind as her cage was too big to take with us.  We made sure she had plenty of food and water, and then we headed for the garage where our car was. 

Out in the hallway, our neighbour Marg was standing there holding her cat saying she didn't know what to do as she had no car and nowhere to go.  I told her to come with us, and she could come to my mother's with us until she could get in contact with her daughter and figure out where she was going to stay.

We were on the third floor, so we all went down to the second floor to get to the garage since our hallway was blocked. As I was nearing the garage, water was pouring on top of my head and I was in water up to my ankles. We made it to the garage and discovered that the door would not open because the power was out. A couple of guys broke the chain on the garage door and forced it open. We left, heading for my mother's which was on the other side of Bedford Basin, about a 15-minute drive away. The drive to her house was scary to say the least. We had to dodge fallen down trees and broken power lines. Debris was flying through the air and landing in front of our car. A full-sized tree blew in front our our path as well. The city was in complete darkness. We finally reached my mother's and were safe.

The following day I ventured out and explored the city to see the damage. It was unbelieveable. Trains were tossed off their tracks. Roofs were blown off of houses. Trees were blown down, some on top of houses and cars. Boats were tossed from the harbour up onto people's lawns and some were sunk.

We returned to our building to see if we could get in and to check out the damage in daylight.  This is the front lawn of our apartment building.  All of the trees were blown forward.

Here is where the major damage occurred.

This is our apartment.  We could hear Tico in there screeching away from inside.  However we were not allowed to enter the building yet as they had to make sure it was safe.

The following group of pics were all taken on or nearby Windmill Road.

This was flooding on the Bedford Highway.

This is the Halifax Ferry Terminal.  The windows were blown out.

South Street clean up.

A lot of trees fell in the Old Burying Ground at the corner of Spring Garden Rd. and Barrington St.  The Old Burying Ground is the oldest cemetery in Halifax.  It became a cemetery in 1749, the same year that Halifax was founded.  Many of Halifax's earliest settlers are buried here, and it was used for about 100 years.

The Public Gardens didn't escape the storm's wrath either.  The Gardens remained closed to the public until July 1, 2004.

The image below is the Army doing clean-up in Camp Hill Cemetery.  Some Wikipedia info about Camp Hill Cemetery:

"As a cemetery in the provincial capital, Camp Hill became the final resting place for many of Nova Scotia's elite. Officials did allow for the burial of black Canadians, albeit in a segregated section of the cemetery. In the 1990s it was pointed out that the graves of African-Canadian veterans of World War I, unlike other white Canadian veterans, were marked by nothing more than flat white stones. This situation has since been rectified by the federal department of Veterans Affairs.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission maintains the war graves of 10 service personnel of World War I and over 80 of World War II.

There are also 17 graves of Norwegian sailors, soldiers and merchant seamen in Camp Hill Cemetery who died in Nova Scotia during World War II. These men were at sea when Germany invaded Norway in 1940. The King and government of Norway ordered the more than 1,000 ships at sea to go to allied ports."

The next image is also in front of Camp Hill Cemetery.  It is actually directly across the street from Camp Hill Hospital.  A paramedic lost his life here when a tree fell on his ambulance.

The next couple of images are from South End Halifax.

The following images are taken in North End Halifax, and shows the backyard of my grandmother's house on Merson Avenue.  For the first image I was standing in her neighbour's backyard.

For this image I am standing in my grandmother's backyard, shooting towards her other neighbour's house on the opposite side.

What do people do after a big weather event?  Go to Tim Horton's of course!  I think this was the only Tim Hortons for miles that had power.  The line up went all the way down Lady Hammond Road.

After visiting my grandmother we decided to drive back to our apartment building and see if we could get in. Security guards were there preventing anyone from going in, mainly to prevent people from looting.  There is also significant structural damage to the building and for safety reasons that part of the building was off-limits to everyone.  Once we showed ID to prove our address, a security guard escorted us to our apartment so we could collect some things and our bird, Tico.

Below is a view of the collapsed part of the building.  Our apartment only sustained water damage, but the whole wing was condemned because of the damage and had to be rebuilt. Unfortunately we had to find a new place to live because it was going to take many months to rebuild that wing of the building.

Below are some images around our neighbourhood:

This is Kelly's Deli on Wyse Road, which used to be a Harvey's.

This is the parking attendant booth behind the building where I worked (Portland St.).

Note to Self:  Don't park under huge trees during a hurricane!

We found a new flat to rent in North End Halifax.  We received insurance funds for our water-damaged goods.  This is one hurricane I will NEVER forget.