When the winds were gusting up to 86 kilometers an hour on Saturday afternoon in the city, emergency crews were finding it tough responding to all the trees that were coming down on power lines around the city like dominos.
The cleanup is now underway but the head of the Emergency Measures Organisation in the city, Fire Chief Kevin Clifford says it could last all week long. Yellow tape has been placed around fallen trees in King’s Square and the Loyalist Burial Ground because the fire department wants to keep people from climbing on them to take pictures since they may not be stable and someone could get injured.
Rothesay Mayor Bill Bishop tells CHSJ News the wind was very destructive just a few months after the big ice storm. He says this storm may even have caused more damage because trees were actually uprooted whereas last December, most lost limbs and branches. It’s believed all the rain softened up the ground to such an extent, the trees became more vulnerable to being uprooted.
The head of E-M-O in St. Stephen Jeff Richardson says the wind also was the big problem in the town, knocking over trees even though they got 143 millimeters of rain which was a lot more than the 74 millimeters that fell in the Saint John area. There was flooding on Saturday which closed King Street.
Organizers of the Cavendish Beach Music Festival had to cancel all of Saturday night’s performances because of post-tropical storm Arthur. Earlier, country-music stars Blake Shelton and Darius Rucker were forced to pull out.