Fiona has caused two people on the Canadian Atlantic coast, including one washed out. Another storm, Ian, will become a “major” hurricane Monday evening or Tuesday morning before reaching the west of Cuba.
Le Monde with AFP
Hurricane alerts were lifted on Sunday, September 25, in Canada but the passage of Fiona – now a post -tropical storm that weakens going up north – left “immense” damage on The country’s Atlantic coast, and caused the death of two people, according to the authorities.
Sunday afternoon, the province of Ile-Prince-Edouard announced a death, while in that of Newfoundland, the emergency services found floating in the water the body of a woman of 73 years old, swept away by the waves, Saturday, during the storm. The victim came from the small town of Channel-Port-aux-Basques. There, more than twenty houses were torn off by the fury ocean and two hundred residents evacuated, according to Mayor Brian Button. The victim had apparently taken refuge in his cellar when the waves have invaded everything.
“A war zone,” said the mayor to describe his city. “We have to give us a little time. We cannot go back to normal in one day,” he explained via Facebook Live, while the locality carries the marks of the passage of Fiona: heaps of debris, barriers metallic twisted by the gigantic waves…
Some 320,000 people remained deprived of electricity in five provinces, Fiona having dropped trees and torn from roofs. Hundreds of employees were working to restore the current, while the army helped to clear the roads. “At the end of the day, it will be the storm that will have caused the most damage we have ever seen,” said Tim Houston, the Prime Minister of one of the most affected provinces, Nova Scotia, on the channel CBC News.
The Hurricane had already left at least seven dead last week, including four in Puerto Rico, two in the Dominican Republic and one in Guadeloupe.
Ian approach
While Canada has grinds its wounds, Florida (United States) and Cuba are preparing for the upcoming arrival of the Ian storm. It should turn into a hurricane on Monday morning, and become a “major” hurricane on Monday evening or Tuesday morning before reaching the west of Cuba, has already warned the National Center for American Hurricane (NHC).
The organization has issued an “hurricane alert” for several regions of Cuba (Isla de Juventud, Pinar del Rio, and Artemisa), as well as for the largest island in the British territory of the Cayman islands, Grand Cayman, that Ian should graze on Monday.
The NHC describes “major” hurricanes those whose winds reach at least 178 km/h, categories 3, 4 and 5 of the so-called “Saffir-Simpson” scale which has five in total. The hurricane is then likely to inflict devastating damage, to damage houses, to uproot trees and to disturb the distribution of water and electricity.
Joe Biden cancels its trip to Florida
Ian should go up, via the Gulf of Mexico, to Florida which has already started to take its precautions. NASA has given up takeoff scheduled for Tuesday of its new mega rocket for the moon, from the Kennedy space center located in this state in the south of the United States.
US President Joe Biden has given up a trip that should have taken him to Florida on Tuesday, and placed the state under the “state of emergency” regime, which makes it possible to unlock federal aids, While the republican governor Ron Desantis called on Twitter the inhabitants to “take precautions”.
In various localities of the State, the authorities began to distribute sandbags to protect houses in the face of the risk of floods. “It is now that it is necessary to prepare. Do not wait until it is too late,” tweeted Jane Castor, mayor of Tampa, city of Florida located according to the NHC on the trajectory of Ian.