Prince Edward Island is cleaning up after heavy rain and wind brought massive flooding to the province earlier this week.
A powerful nor’easter swept through the Maritimes and eastern Canada starting on Tuesday, bringing heavy rain and snow that caused flight delays, road accidents, and some power outages.
P.E.I. Minister of Transportation Robert Vessey said Friday that the weather caused damage to more than two dozen structures, including bridges, culverts and major road beds.
“Anywhere we run water through the public right-of-way,” Vessey elaborated. “There’s a lot of areas that they just can’t take that amount of water. It’s eroding road beds too, because the water it’s got nowhere to go, it just swirls,” he told CTV’s Canada AM.
The western part of the province was hit particularly hard after receiving approximately 170 millimetres of rain over a 24-hour period.
“There was a lot of frost on the ground, and the rain ran just like it would on concrete,” Vessey said.
With a warmer forecast on the horizon, engineering crews are now waiting for the water to subside so they can inspect bridges.
But P.E.I. could be looking at a long recovery period.
“it’s a bad time of year for this to happen, anytime of year is bad, but especially this late into the season,” Vessey said.
The province is trying to “leverage” the federal government’s natural disaster funding relief, Vessey said, but he added it’s too early to tell yet what kind of support they may receive.
The weather system first landed in the Maritimes late Tuesday, bringing heavy rain, high winds and snow. As it moved slowly westward, Ontario and Quebec received their first major dumping of snow this season.
Meanwhile, residents on the west coast are also continuing to clean up from heavy precipitation that breached dikes and forced evacuations in some coastal towns.
