'No power, no heat': Tens of thousands of Nova Scotians still without electricity

In Halifax, the sound of generators has been breaking the quiet after the storm, as thousands of residents remain without electricity in the wake of Fiona.

Gerry Dunphy bought his generator last year but didn’t use it. Now, he says it’s been running full tilt since Friday night.

“I’m running a couple TVs, the fridge. I can't run the phone because that's not working, the lines are down,” said Dunphy.

According to Nova Scotia Power’s live power outage map, estimated restoration times for affected customers range anywhere from Sunday night to Wednesday.

“We have no power, we have no heat,” says Christine Barbour. She was counting on her fireplace to keep the evening chill at bay. Fiona took care of that.

“It was scary Friday night,” she says. “I heard the big branch crack…and then we heard the rumbling and more branches, and that's probably when it knocked the chimney off the roof, onto my neighbour's car.”

On Willow Street in central Halifax, a large, downed oak tree did a number on power lines, ripping the power masts off several houses.

It’s the third time Rob MacNeish’s property has been left powerless by the same tree.

The last time was during Dorian in 2019, which knocked out his power for ten days, even after his neighbours were reconnected after three.

He’s been asking the city to cut the tree down since then.

Fiona did it instead.

As he did last time, MacNeish says now it will likely cost him up to $1,000 in repair and reconnection fees to get back on the grid.

“I understand that it's a low priority, we're one family, one unit. But for it to happen again, and us to try to prevent it, it's kind of frustrating,” he says.

Sunday afternoon, a crew of emergency volunteers from across the country came to assess the tree and the damage it caused.

The members of Team Rubicon were equipped with chainsaws and safety equipment to clear trees from roads, but team leader Jeff Becker says the job on Willow Street will take a bit more than that.

Part of the group’s job also includes assessing the work needed for emergency organizations.

“We're logging the information and passing it back through our chain which eventually would go to, in this case, Nova Scotia Power,” he says.

On top of the significant damage caused by Fiona’s winds, several transformers were captured on video exploding in the Halifax area during the storm. There are also several reports of power poles catching fire.

Nova Scotia Power’s storm lead says the damage is widespread and will take days to fix in some parts of the province.

“In some locations, we have whole streets where trees have come down and broken almost every pole along that street,” says Matt Drover. “We're using all those crews [brought in] to make sure we can get those poles fixed as soon as possible.”

The wait for power means many residents are doing what they can.

Without power, chef and restaurant owner Claudia Pinto improvised to keep her business going while using up the food in her freezer at the same time.

“I have charcoal, I have my BBQ, and I have all the yummy food,” she says. “So I thought, ‘why don't I do the charcoal BBQ?’”

The sizzle of the meat on the grill, heard alongside the hum of generators, in Nova Scotia’s largest city.