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'A lot of the beach is gone': Parlee Beach badly damaged after post-tropical storm Fiona

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One of the most popular beaches on the East Coast looks a lot different now than it did before post-tropical storm Fiona ravaged Atlantic Canada.

Boardwalks at Parlee Beach in Pointe-du-Chêne, N.B., were destroyed and the sand dunes were swept away.

“A lot of the beach is gone, a lot of the dune is gone,” says resident Pat Gallant.

"I'd say at least maybe 10, 15 feet, all the way along though. Not just one spot."

For more than 30 years, New Brunswick has been trucking about 1,000 loads of sand from the western end of the beach to the eastern side to replenish what is lost in a typical year. Area MLA Jacques Leblanc says it’s going to take much more than that this year.

“We had a beach nourishment program, that’s been established since the mid-1980s. Hurricane Fiona, to recoup what we lost it, would be 5,000 truckloads of sand, that’s what I’m hearing,” says Leblanc.

The ocean took a similar toll at the Pointe-Du-Chêne Yacht Club down the road.

“The water breached over our break-wall,” says club manager Brandon Webb.

That wall stands at least 15 feet high. If they want to make it higher, Webb estimates it will cost thousands of dollars per foot to do so.

“We are really hoping that some of the disaster relief fund will come our way and we will be able to invest in this to not only protect the club and the marina, but the wharf and the bay,” Webb says.

It's a wharf people thought was ready for anything Mother Nature could bring its way.

“I would say it’s five to six times worse than Dorian and even possibly higher than that. We were ready for a Dorian type of a storm but we certainly weren’t ready for Fiona and I don’t know what the future holds,” says the general manager of the Pointe-Du-Chêne Harbour Authority, Victor Cormier.

The wharf is expected to reopen to the public Tuesday. Discussions are underway to plan for the next Fiona, or worse.

As for Parlee Beach, the cleanup is almost complete, but the rebuilding of the boardwalks and the restoration of the ecologically significant sand dunes is going to take some time.

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