JUST SAYIN’

“Dorian ripped a good-sized limb from a tree across the street, sending it hurtling down on an overhead power line with enough force to rip the power mast out from the side of our house. We were lucky.”

NS Power needs to bury the problem On Sept. 7, 2019, as smashed-and-dashed So we know there will probably be more and worse storms its merry way through Halifax, I happened to be more than ahead. We know, or should know, we must dramatically change 1,000-km away in Vermont, basking in fall sunshine while our ways if we are to slow down the accelerating pace of climate attending a family wedding. change. And we know, or should know, we must find ways to At one point—to take my mind off what I could still only reduce the impact of those storms we know will cause us grief. imagine was happening at home—I took a stroll through a rela- Burying our electrical and utility wires? Should be a tively new subdivision near the resort. I couldn’t help but note no-brainer. the developers—by choice or by local requirement—had buried Since the 1960s, in fact, the Canadian Federation of Mayors all the neighbourhood’s power and utility wires. and Municipalities has supposedly promoted underground Back home in Halifax, as I soon learned, Dorian had already wiring “not only in new subdivisions, but also in downtown ripped a good-sized limb from a tree across the street from our areas and older residential neighborhoods, where the Federa- house, sending it hurtling down on an overhead power line tion urges the gradual burying of existing overhead systems.” with enough force to rip the power mast out from the side of Makes sense. According to a recent study by the Florida our house. It took five days—and an electrician’s $1,000 house Public Service Commission, 40 per cent of its customers served call—before our power could be restored. by underground wiring suffered “significantly” fewer outages We were lucky. At its height, the storm disrupted elec- and were without power for shorter periods of time per outage trical service for 80 per cent of Power’s 500,000 than their fellow overheaded customers. customers. By Sept. 15 (eight days after the storm) the private OK. So, what’s actually happening on and under the ground monopoly utility was still tweeting: “approx. 1,000 customers in Halifax? remaining without power and we’ve got 930 power line tech- During negotiations last year over how high a high-rise nicians and 262 forestry technicians working today to get us could be, the city and the developer traded proposals seemingly over the finish line.” designed to get around a municipal requirement to bury the We don’t know—won’t know for some time—just how much cables. According to city staff, considered this latest storm cost individuals, businesses, governments. “undergrounding overhead wires” for the development “prob- We do know for surer-than-certainty it won’t be the last. lematic” and wasn’t keen to speed up its “current planning” to During the whole of the 20th century, only eight officially make that happen. named storms crossed over Nova Scotia. In the first two It now seems unlikely the developer will bury the wiring. decades of the 21st century, there have been four, including Instead, we’ll wait until after the next storm, and the next, and 2003’s Hurricane Juan, “the most damaging storm in [Hali- probably the last to do what we should have done years ago. fax’s] modern history,” according to Environment . Five months later, , an officially un-named winter hurricane disguised as a became “one of the most explosive weather bombs ever, even more powerful than its namesake Hurricane Juan,” dumping more snow on the city STEPHEN KIMBER, who teaches journalism at the University of King’s College, is the award-winning in a single day than had fallen in any city of comparable size author of one novel and nine nonfiction books. ever and prompted an unprecedented “state of emergency” with overnight curfews that shut the city down for four days. FEEDBACK Hurricane Dorian? Well, let’s just say it’s no longer reason- * [email protected] able to describe it—as many did Hurricane Juan— as the storm a @AtlanticBus; @skimber; #JustSayin of the century.

20 | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019