Flooding leads to mandatory evacuations in South Shore of Nova Scotia

Residents and campers at a campground in Mahone Bay, N.S., have been forced to evacuate due to flooding damage.

It was a long Friday night for the nearly 300 residents of the RayPort Campground.

“We all agreed it was the hardest rain any of us had ever seen or heard. The thunder and lightning lasted all night; it didn't let up, not once,” said Everett Powell, who’s staying at the campground for the summer.

Powell said many nearby moved their campers away from the river as the water level rose over the weekend.

On Monday, those at the campground were informed they were under a mandatory evacuation order due to significant damage to the main route in and out of the park — which also runs under the 103 highway.

“We are not allowed back in yet. We have to wait to find out when they let us back in to get our stuff and our pets,” Powell said.

The South Shore of Nova Scotia was hard hit by the weekend storm. The Municipality of Lunenburg’s mayor says between 260 and 320 millimeters of rain fell.

“That would be a whole summer’s worth of rain and we received this in 18 hours,” Carolyn Bolivar-Getson said.

The extreme rain levels damaged roadways, infrastructure and homes.

“We’ve got flooded basements, we’ve got many roads, not only on Trunk 10, but we have shoulders of the road that have gorges in them three and four feet deep. This definitely has hit our municipality very hard,” Bolivar-Getson said.

The municipality’s mayor hopes there will be money from the province to help people recover from the destruction.

“The provincial financial disaster relief fund I’m sure will kick into action here after they get the tallies in place,” she said.

For now, campers evacuated from RayPort Campground can come to the fire hall in Blockhouse to register for assistance.

Monday afternoon the evacuation order was expanded to include all residents of Shingle Mill Road north of Highway 103 and a State of Local Emergency has been declared.

Also on Monday, first responders in West Hants recovered the body of a 52-year-old Windsor man along with unidentified human remains while searching for the four people who went missing during the flooding.

The man, a youth and two children were reported missing on Saturday after their vehicles got caught in flood waters while they were trying to evacuate the area.

The search continues for the other missing people following the record-breaking weather event.

In a press release Monday, RCMP confirmed industrial and high-flow pumping equipment will continue to be used to help lower the water level in the primary search area of Brooklyn.

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