Summerside cleanup progressing, mayor hoping city gets 'some assistance'

Five days after it hit, the destruction left behind by post-tropical storm Dorian was still obvious in the city of Summerside on Thursday.

While some of the downed trees have been removed others are in the same spot they've been for the past few days.

Crews have been working 16-hour days to clean up the damage and restore power to the remaining city utility customers who still don't have electricity.

"It's very dangerous work and it was windy. They couldn't do anything until the wind came down to a certain point," said Basil Stewart, mayor of Summerside. 

"It was difficult to call in help because other areas of the Maritimes were using their electrical crew and our crew were working 16 hours a day."

Stewart said they are hopeful that the remaining houses get power restored in the next day or two.

He said they have been having meetings every day with city managers to keep up to date with what is going on with the community.

"We're keeping track of everything and hoping at the end of the day that we get some assistance," Stewart said.

"Because there has been a lot of overtime and a lot of expense but that is beside the point, we have got to get the electricity back on and the streets open."

'Drastic inclement weather'

Stewart said the city's emergency plan was in place and they worked through the issues as they came up.

There were warming shelters set up at city hall and Credit Union Place.

While this gave people the ability to charge devices or maybe get a shower, some were concerned that may not have been enough for the city's most vulnerable.

Nancy Beth Guptill said her work with non-profit organizations had people reaching out her to see if there were any emergency shelters set up.

"I think this is an area where we as a community need to start paying attention to because we're having this drastic inclement weather and more severe storms," she said.

"We do need to be looking at taking care of our homeless people or people who may have some sort of devastation."

Damage was not just out in the open but inside people's homes as well. Sarah Kember's basement was soaked from all the rain because the sump pump stopped working once the power went out Saturday evening.

"Already there's mould along the drywall and some of the furniture, the wood is quite bad," Kember said.

"I think a lot of it has to go because it stinks and it has ruined a good portion of it. I'm hoping some of my Christmas decorations might be saved."

Some residents have only just had their power reconnected, like Greg Perry, who's house lights turned back on Wednesday evening. 

"We always say why are we one of the last but somebody has to be last and going around and looking at other places, devastation was a lot worse than ours. Like we had probably only $200 damage done to the house, where other people had thousands and thousands," he said.

"You look at it from that perspective and you say 'Hey, I'm bad but not near as bad as somebody else."

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