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Lessons learned from Hurricane Fiona in Charlottetown

This case study is part of the 2024 Canadian City Parks Report, showcasing Inspiring projects, people, and policies from across Canada that offer tangible solutions to the most pressing challenges facing city parks.

Summary

  • Hurricane Fiona hit Charlottetown as one of the most powerful storms ever, causing massive damage to infrastructure and tree canopies.
  • High winds caused power outages and knocked down trees, resulting in communication challenges and closing amenities like trails and playgrounds.
  • Protecting against high winds is challenging, but cities can be more prepared through strong partnerships across city departments and with local community groups to be more nimble in times of uncertainty. 

As climate change brings more frequent extreme weather, cities are grappling with increasing storm damage to parks and infrastructure. In 2024, 97% of municipal parks departments said that addressing impacts from climate change and extreme weather has become a challenge. Floods, droughts, and fires all pose risks, but there’s another element that’s caused massive damage in recent years–wind.

Park managers we spoke with in 2023 mentioned increasingly intense storms that don’t just bring higher wind speeds, but winds that last for more sustained periods, causing far more damage. While cities have begun to redesign parks to withstand flooding or adapt to drought through altering planting palettes, preparing for high wind presents a difficult challenge. 

As the Parks and Recreation Manager for the City of Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island, Frank Quinn knows a thing or two about preparing for storms. But when Hurricane Fiona hit the Island in September 2022 as one of the strongest storms to ever land on Canadian shores, it was a different beast.

Hurricane Fiona Damage. Credit: City of Charlottetown

The storm was Atlantic Canada’s most costly, causing $220 million in damage to Prince Edward Island alone. Hurricane Fiona lasted for hours, damaging municipal infrastructure and ravaging the city’s tree canopy. In the Royalty Oaks natural area many old growth trees were knocked down–some 300 years old.

Quinn said the City’s Emergency Measures Organization, which includes senior staff from different departments, met frequently leading up to the storm as well as afterwards. As a smaller city, Quinn said people from different departments are used to working and supporting each other–something that came in handy after the storm. 

“We all had good working relationships, we all know each other. We had a wide range of experiences and expertise.” They were able to draw on each other’s knowledge of internal staff expertise, but also contractors who could be brought on to help. 

Public safety and clean-up were top priority, but Quinn was also cognizant that “once you’re in the house for a couple days, you want to get out.” His team assessed every playground within the first couple of days as well as inspected trail systems, posting notices about what was closed and what was open for use. 

Without power, communication was a challenge, Quinn said. As the city cleared trails and re-opened amenities like playgrounds, they posted messages on the city’s website and used the media. But the key to public messaging was working with community organizations, like church groups, to pass information along to city residents.

The City is now building redundancies into systems and creating more back-up services. One big issue during the storm was fuel, Quinn said. While staff had fueled up machinery and vehicles prior to the storm arriving, when they needed to be refueled there were issues because the main fuel depot did not have a back-up generator on site.

“We dealt with smaller storms before where there were power outages for a day or two, but when you have a storm and sections of the City doesn’t have power for two weeks, this creates several issues and challenges,” such as where to get fuel.

Franck Quinn, Parks and Recreation Manager for the City of Charlottetown.

Quinn said the City has learned lessons from the experience of Fiona and has already begun to prepare for the next storm. “We’re building new infrastructure and making it more resilient so that it can stand up to higher winds,” he said. The City also purchased new equipment that can be used for cleaning up trees, but can also be adapted for other day-to-day uses like grading trails.

Recommendations 

  • Create memorandums of understanding with local organizations and groups on what resources and assistance they can offer during and after storms (like communications help), but be sure to review yearly to keep things current.
  • Ensure communication strategies that relay critical safety messages to residents as well as the closure or opening of park amenities like trails and playgrounds include methods of communication that work if the power is out, such as physically posted messages and leveraging community organization networks.
  • Build redundancy into systems (e.g, generators) and ensure you have enough fuel to operate machinery for tree removals and trail clearing even if fuel pumps are down due to sustained power outages.