South Shore communities assess damage after historic rainfall

Officials and residents on Nova Scotia's South Shore are taking stock of infrastructure damage after torrential downpours caused flooding in the area Friday and Saturday.

Carolyn Bolivar-Getson, mayor of the Municipality of the District of Lunenburg, said she's never seen damage like it.

"I lived the flood of 2005. We had damage at that time, but this here is by far much more significant than that was," Bolivar-Getson said Sunday.

Bolivar-Getson said water levels have been receding in most areas of the municipality, but the extent of damage is still being assessed. 

She said funding will be required to replace infrastructure and conduct repairs.

Theodore Bruhm, 72, and his wife Ethel Willis, 82, were evacuated from West Northfield early Saturday, as floodwaters threatened their home.

Bruhm said an area of their road had been washed out, so he and his wife, who has difficulty walking due to a medical issue, had to get in the bucket of an excavator to get to a rescue vehicle.

The couple were first taken to the Lunenburg County Lifestyle Centre in Bridgewater and spent the night at the Nova Scotia Community College.

Bruhm said Sunday he was still shaky from the ordeal.

"This here was a hard thing," he said. "The older you get, the more you mind stuff like that."

'Like somebody opened up the skies'

Thomas Ogden of Bridgewater said chunks of a riverbank outside his home were washed away by floodwaters during the downpours. 

He said several of his trees are gone and the water supply to his home was cut off when pipes were washed away by the raging waters.

Ogden said Friday's extreme rainfall was the first time he witnessed anything like it in his four years of living in the area.

"You couldn't see two feet in front of you," he said. "It was just like somebody opened up the skies."

In Bakers Settlement, about 15 kilometres west of Bridgewater, Neily Holdright said the area on both sides of one road looked like a lake.

Holdright said a small bridge near his neighbour's home was moved downstream by the force of the water.

He said by mid-morning Saturday, the waters had subsided enough for him and a neighbour to pull the bridge up on a bank and salvage it. 

"I've only lived here for 10 years myself, but all the locals and my in-laws across the street here, they'd never seen anything like this and they've lived here for 77 years," Holdright said.

"To see all of this underwater in the form of a lake was pretty devastating and shocking."

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