Hurricane Lee Tracking from Environment Canada Sep 15 2023

Utility officials say they have learned lessons over the past year and are better prepared to deal with the impacts of Hurricane Lee.

At a news conference Friday, representatives of Nova Scotia Power, Bell and Eastlink joined emergency management officials, Environment Canada meteorologists and Minister John Lohr to describe how they have anticipated the needs ahead of the storm as well as their plans for recovery.

Following Hurricane Fiona in 2022, several parts of the province were without cell service for an extended period of time.

Representatives from both Eastlink and Bell say their respective companies have taken several steps to prevent outages and keep any down time to a minimum.

Those include spending tens of millions of dollars to ensure they have generators in key places, securing fuel to keep their emergency fleets on the roads, and ensuring personnel from out of province are ready to provide support should they be called upon.

Geoff Moore with Bell Canada says Nova Scotians can expect to see improvements in the aspects of their service that can be predicted and controlled, but there are situations that will arise for which they can’t plan.

“We can control the cell site, we can control fuel, we can control having batteries on sites, we can control our response, what we can’t control is this damage, excuse me, the damage the storm does. So if there’s fiber cables broken, if there’s you know, poles down that are impacting that connection, or that fiber connection, excuse me, to the cell site, those are things that I can’t plan for,” said Moore.

“I can plan to respond, make sure I’ve got the right resources, the right equipment, the right material, but I don’t know where that’s going to happen so we’re very much dependent, if you wish, on what the storm does and where it does it.”

Nova Scotia Power says over 10,000 trees were trimmed following Fiona. The utility says it spent $32 million in 2023 on tree trimming and plans to increase that amount to $40 million in 2024.

Environment Canada Meteorologist Bob Robichaud says the hurricane is expected to become a post tropical storm by the time it makes landfall in Nova Scotia.

Robichaud says some people may have the mistaken idea that the change in designation to post tropical storm may mean a less powerful event.

“What we mean by post tropical is essentially the structure of the storm is different. It says nothing about the intensity,” said Robichaud. “So, we expect this storm, as it approaches and as it gets close to the coastline, to be very close to hurricane strength. We’re thinking just below, but it will still be a large storm that’s very near hurricane strength at the time.”

The winds are forecast to reach speeds up to 120km/h by the time Hurricane Lee reaches Nova Scotia Saturday morning. The region could see up to 150mm of rain beginning Friday and continuing throughout Saturday.

Rain, wind and storm surge warnings have been issued for the South Shore, including Queens County.

Emergency officials are asking residents to be prepared with supplies, food and fresh water to last 72 hours.

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Emergency alert message sent to cell phones across NS when 9-1-1 went down

Emergency calls to 9-1-1 went answered Monday morning.

A failure occurred around 7:00am which prevented residents of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island from connecting with emergency services for roughly two hours.

The minister responsible for the Emergency Management Office John Lohr says to his knowledge this may be the first time a 9-1-1 system has ever gone down anywhere in Canada.

“Our goal is not to have a split second of disruption of the 9-1-1 services,” said Lohr. “That’s our goal and just to have two hours lost this morning is very, very shocking to us.”

Officials at the EMO centre sent a message out over the Nova Scotia emergency alert system at 8:08am.

Lohr says the time was needed to gather alternate telephone numbers and ensure those numbers were correct and working before providing them to the public.

At this point, the Minister says he is unaware of any situation where someone needed help and didn’t receive it during the two hours 9-1-1 was down.

At a press availability Monday afternoon, Minister Lohr explained the 9-1-1 system is operated separately from other cellular or landline systems and is built to a more robust and higher standard than those established by the CRTC for personal and business use.

There are multiple redundancies built into the system which are supposed to prevent any disruption to the service.

Several municipalities took it upon themselves, through their social media channels, to provide residents with a list of telephone numbers their residents could call to connect with local help.

Lohr says the provincial centre informed the municipal units about the breakdown and while the two levels of government work together during emergencies, the 9-1-1 system is a provincial responsibility, and the provincial team were focused on getting help out to all corners of Nova Scotia.

“The municipalities are incredibly important partners for us in their EMO plan and each municipality has their own EMO plan,” said Lohr. “This PCC is the provincial coordination centre, we would coordinate with the municipal emergency measures offices but as Paul Mason (Director of Nova Scotia’s Emergency Management Office) has said the 9-1-1 system is overarching so that would be our responsibility.”

The 9-1-1 system is operated by Bell across the three provinces and the company is still investigating the cause of the system failure.

Lohr says he expects they will provide an update once they determine the reason for the communications blackout.

**update Feb 1: CBC is reporting Bell provided them a statement indicating the outage was the result of a software upgrade

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Twitter: @edwardhalverson

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