This article was written by Ariel Fernandez, Andrea Rodriguez, and John Myers Jr., and was published in the Globe & Mail on October 31, 2025.
Nicola Gowdie stands where only the foundation of her home remains after being hit by Hurricane Melissa, in St. Elizabeth, Jamaica, on Wednesday.
The rumble of large machinery, whine of chainsaws and chopping of machetes echoed through communities across the northern Caribbean on Thursday as they dug out from the destruction of Hurricane Melissa and surveyed the damage left behind.
In Jamaica, government workers and residents began clearing roads in a push to reach dozens of isolated communities in the island’s southeast that sustained a direct hit from one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record.
Stunned residents wandered about, some staring at their roofless homes and waterlogged belongings strewn around them.
“I don’t have a house now,” Sylvester Guthrie, a resident of Lacovia in the southern parish of St. Elizabeth, said as he held onto his bicycle, the only possession of value left after the storm.
Emergency relief flights began landing at Jamaica’s main international airport, which reopened late Wednesday, as crews distributed water, medicine and other basic supplies. Helicopters dropped food as they thrummed above communities where the storm flattened homes, wiped out roads and destroyed bridges, cutting them off from assistance.
“The entire Jamaica is really broken because of what has happened,” Education Minister Dana Morris Dixon said.
Police said at least 14 people have died in Jamaica, and they expected the death toll to keep rising. In one isolated community, residents pleaded with officials to remove the body of one victim tangled in a tree.
More than 13,000 people remained crowded into shelters, with 72 per cent of the island without power and only 35 per cent of mobile phone sites in operation, officials said. People clutched cash as they formed long lines at the few gas stations and supermarkets open in affected areas.
Water trucks have been mobilized to serve many of Jamaica’s rural communities that are not connected to the government’s utility system, Water Minister Matthew Samuda said.
In Cuba, heavy equipment began to clear blocked roads and highways and the military helped rescue people trapped in isolated communities and at risk from landslides.
No deaths were reported after the Civil Defence evacuated more than 735,000 people across eastern Cuba ahead of the storm. Residents were slowly starting to return home Thursday.
The town of El Cobre in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba was one of the hardest hit. Home to some 7,000 people, it is also the site of the Basilica of Our Lady of Charity, the patron saint of Cuba who is deeply venerated by Catholics and practitioners of Santería, an AfroCuban religion.
“We went through this very badly. So much wind, so much wind. Zinc roofs were torn off. Some houses completely collapsed. It was a disaster,” Odalys Ojeda, a 61-year-old retiree, said as she looked up at the sky from her living room where the roof and other parts of the house were torn away.
Melissa also unleashed catastrophic flooding in Haiti, where at least 30 people were reported killed and 20 others were missing, mostly in the country’s southern region. Some 15,000 people also remained in shelters.
“It is a sad moment for the country,” said Laurent Saint-Cyr, president of Haiti’s transitional presidential council.
He said officials expect the death toll to rise and noted that the government was mobilizing resources to search for people and provide emergency relief.
This article was written by Ariel Fernandez, Andrea Rodriguez, John Myers Jr. and Evens Sanon, and was published in the Globe & Mail on October 30, 2025.
Residents walk through Lacovia Tombstone, Jamaica, in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa, on Wednesday. Jamaica’s Education Minister said 77 per cent of the island was without power.
At least 23 people dead, 13 missing across Haiti; eight people reported dead in Jamaica
Hurricane Melissa left at least dozens dead amid widespread destruction across Cuba, Haiti and Jamaica, where roofless homes, toppled utility poles and waterlogged furniture dominated the landscape Wednesday.
A landslide blocked the main roads of Santa Cruz in Jamaica’s St. Elizabeth parish, where the streets were reduced to mud pits. Residents swept water from homes as they tried to salvage belongings. Wind ripped off part of the roof at a high school that serves as a public shelter.
“I never see anything like this before in all my years living here,” resident Jennifer Small said.
The extent of the damage from the deadly Category 5 hurricane was unclear Wednesday as widespread power outages and dangerous conditions persisted.
“It is too early for us to say definitively,” said Dana Morris Dixon, Jamaica’s Education Minister.
Melissa made landfall Tuesday in Jamaica with top winds of 295 kilometres an hour, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record, before weakening and moving on to Cuba, but even countries outside the direct path of the massive storm felt its devastating effects.
At least 23 people have died across Haiti and 13 are missing, Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency said in a statement, revising the death toll downward Wednesday. Twenty of those reported dead and 10 of the missing are from a southern coastal town where flooding collapsed dozens of homes. At least eight are dead in Jamaica.
In Cuba, officials reported collapsed houses, blocked mountain roads and roofs blown off buildings Wednesday, with the heaviest destruction concentrated in the southwest and northwest. Authorities said about 735,000 people remained in shelters.
“That was hell. All night long, it was terrible,” said Reinaldo Charon in Santiago de Cuba. The 52year-old was one of the few people venturing out Wednesday, covered by a plastic sheet in the intermittent rain.
In Jamaica, more than 25,000 people were packed into shelters Wednesday and more streamed in throughout the day after the storm ripped roofs off their homes and left them temporarily homeless. Ms. Dixon said 77 per cent of the island was without power.
The outages complicated assessing the damage because of “a total communication blackout” in areas, Richard Thompson, acting director-general of Jamaica’s Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, told the Nationwide News Network radio station.
“Recovery will take time, but the government is fully mobilized,” Prime Minister Andrew Holness said in a statement. “Relief supplies are being prepared, and we are doing everything possible to restore normalcy quickly.”
Officials in Black River, Jamaica, a coastal town of approximately 5,000 people in the southwestern part of the island, pleaded for aid at a news conference Wednesday.
“Catastrophic is a mild term based on what we are observing,” Mayor Richard Solomon said.
Mr. Solomon said the local rescue infrastructure had been demolished by the storm. The hospital, police units and emergency services were inundated by floods and unable to conduct emergency operations.
Jamaican Transportation Minister Daryl Vaz said two of the island’s airports reopened Wednesday to relief flights only, with UN agencies and dozens of nonprofits on standby to distribute basic goods. “The devastation is enormous,” he said. “We need all hands on deck to recover stronger and to help those in need at this time.”
The United States is sending rescue and response teams to assist in recovery efforts in the Caribbean, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on X.
St. Elizabeth Police Superintendent Coleridge Minto told Nationwide News Network on Wednesday that authorities have found at least four bodies in southwest Jamaica. One death was reported in the west when a tree fell on a baby, state minister Abka Fitz-Henley told Nationwide News Network.
Before landfall, Melissa had already been blamed for three deaths in Jamaica, three in Haiti and one in the Dominican Republic.
Catastrophic flooding feared as Category 5 hurricane barrels toward Jamaica
This article was written by Abby O’Brien and Jason Miller, and was published in the Toronto Star on October 28, 2025.
Jamaicans and tourists, including many vacationing Canadians, are bracing for galeforce winds, catastrophic flooding and a surge in sea levels ahead of Hurricane Melissa, expected to make landfall Tuesday as one of the worst storms in the country’s history.
But the concerns about the destructive potential of the Category 5 storm stretch beyond the borders of the small Caribbean country, which holds a strong diaspora of nearly 150,000 in Toronto.
“We have no idea what Jamaica will look like after,” David Betty, the president of the Jamaican Canadian Association, told the Star. “We’re beyond believing that we’re going to escape this. We’re almost certain that it’s going to make landfall and that it’s going to be devastating.”
At least seven areas on the island nation were issued evacuation orders on Monday ahead of Hurricane Melissa’s arrival. The storm threatens “catastrophic” damage when it makes its arrival Tuesday morning.
A handful of deaths in the Caribbean have already been attributed to the storm, including in Jamaica. The death toll is expected to rise.
Early reports indicated that more than 50,000 of the islands’ nearly 2.9 million people are already without electricity. Officials say additional widespread power outages and disruption to utilities are possible once the storm lands.
Markham resident Hamlet Nation said the wellbeing of his parents, who live in Clarendon, one of the parishes where the hurricane is projected to make landfall, is top of mind.
His mother, 67, and father, 70, have stocked up on supplies such as food, drinking water and necessary medication.
“When I spoke to my mom this morning, they were charging their devices because they are anticipating that the electricity will go out,” said Nation, who served as a practising physician in Jamaica up until he migrated to Canada in 2020. “I’m concerned about how they’re going to fair.”
Nation’s greatest fear is that the hurricane will remain a Category 5 storm when it lands on the island.
As of Monday, both of the island’s international airports were closed and mandatory evacuations are in place in seven communities in the southern part of the island — near the coastal areas of the parishes of Kingston, St. Andrew and Catherine. Authorities tell the Star that list is expected to grow as the storm closes in.
Those who intend to remain on the island when Melissa hits have been told not to venture from their shelter and to prepare for the possibility of flash flooding and landslides.
Anxieties are high amongst Canadian tourists stranded on the island.
“My stomach is in knots,” Burlington resident Pauline Driscoll, who’s been at a Sandals Resort in Ocho Rios since Oct. 21, told the Star. “We can’t really imagine what we are in for.”
Driscoll, one of many visiting Canadians who will ride the storm out alongside locals, says conditions at the resort were relatively calm on Monday.
Guests who are staying at the resort have been ushered into a single building and are being provided with daily updates, she said. If the property loses power, which Driscoll says she expects will be the case, there are generators in place. Only one of the resort’s restaurants is still serving food and alcohol sales have been paused.
“They want everyone to be capable of following instructions when needed,” Driscoll said.
About an hour west of Sandals, the Emms family, from Nova Scotia, has found themselves in a similar situation.
Allison Emms arrived at Ocean Coral Spring Resort in Falmouth with her husband, son and family friends last Wednesday, only learning of the impending storm when she got to the island.
Emms told the Star she’s repeatedly tried to book an earlier flight home to no avail. “I seriously don’t understand,” she said. “(Air Canada) should have done emergency flights. I’m scared for me and my family’s lives.”
Both Air Canada and WestJet told the Star that flights to and from the island destination have been cancelled amid the severe weather, with operations expected to resume at some point on Wednesday. Air Canada noted that it had provided an extra flight and substituted a larger aircraft on Saturday with approximately 600 seats to bring people back to Canada ahead of the hurricane.
When reached for comment by the Star, Global Affairs Canada said it is closely tracking Melissa’s progress.
There are currently 1,959 Canadians in Jamaica listed with the Registration of Canadians Abroad service; however, this number is only an estimation as registration is voluntary, the agency said.
Canada has currently advised all citizens against travelling to Jamaica. Those on the ground should check with their airline directly regarding the status of their flights, the agency said.
In an address earlier on Monday, Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness encouraged residents to look out for one another.
“Check on your neighbours, especially the elderly and vulnerable, and continue to pray for our nation’s safety,” he said.
In case of crippling damage to the ports and major manufacturing facilities, Holness estimates the nation has food and goods to last 12 weeks, along with enough refined petroleum products to serve for about 10 days after the hurricane hits. There are roughly 880 shelters available across the island, but only 79 were opened to respond to the current need as of Monday evening.
Closer to home, Betty, the president of the Jamaican Canadian Association, says plans are already in the works to fundraise for island communities, and he has been in talks with organizations in the Jamaican diaspora to see how they might pool their efforts.
“We have mobilized,” he said. “We’re definitely going to be doing some sort of fundraising.”
Melissa marks the third Category 5 storm of the 2025 hurricane season. It is expected to make landfall in eastern Cuba Tuesday night, where some areas are expected to get up to 51 centimetres of rainfall, before moving through portions of southeastern Bahamas on Wednesday.
The damage from Melissa’s strong winds and deep pockets of flooding rain will be worsened by the storm’s incredibly slow speed. On Monday afternoon, the monster storm was crawling at about five kilometres per hour.
Forecasters said that sets Jamaica up to be battered for days — far beyond the daylong impacts of the storm’s eye. It’s similar to what Category 5 Dorian did in 2019 to the Abaco Islands in the Bahamas, which it left bulldozed after the hurricane parked over the islands.
The last time the Atlantic produced three or more Category 5 storms was 2005.
This article was written by Reuters News and was published in the Globe & Mail on August 26, 2025.
Locals ride a motorbike through partially flooded streets in Vinh city, in Vietnam’s Nghe An province on Monday owing to Typhoon Kajiki.
Typhoon Kajiki brought torrential rains to Vietnam’s north central coast on Monday, felling trees and flooding homes, despite wind speeds tapering off from earlier in the day.
As of 5 a.m. ET, Kajiki was on the coast of Nghe An and Ha Tinh provinces, with wind speed easing to 118-133 kilometres an hour from as strong as 166 km/h, according to the country’s weather agency.
“It’s terrifying,” said Dang Xuan Phuong, a 48-year-old resident of Cua Lo, a tourism town in Nghe An province directly hit by the storm.
“When I look down from the higher floors I could see waves as tall as two metres, and the water has flooded the roads around us,” Mr. Phuong told Reuters.
State media reports said power in several areas in Ha Tinh province had been cut off, roofs were blown out and floating fishing farms were washed away.
Vietnam had earlier shut airports, closed schools and begun mass evacuations as it prepared for the most powerful storm so far this year.
The government warned earlier of “an extremely dangerous fast-moving storm,” adding that Kajiki would bring heavy rains, flooding and landslides.
With a long coastline facing the South China Sea, Vietnam is prone to storms that are often deadly and trigger dangerous flooding and mudslides.
The weather agency said rainfall could reach 500 millimetres from Monday afternoon until the end of Tuesday in several parts of northern Vietnam. The Vietnamese government said earlier on Monday about 30,000 people had been evacuated from coastal areas. More than 16,500 soldiers and 107,000 paramilitary personnel had been mobilized to help with the evacuation and stand by for search and rescue.
Two airports in Thanh Hoa and Quang Binh provinces were closed, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam. Vietnam Airlines and Vietjet cancelled dozens of flights to and from the area on Sunday and Monday.
Kajiki skirted the southern coast of China’s Hainan Island on Sunday as it moved toward Vietnam
This article was written by Allen G. Breed and John Seewer, and was published in the Globe & Mail on August 20, 2025.
Hurricane Erin churned slowly toward the eastern U.S. Tuesday, stirring up treacherous waves that already have led to dozens of water rescues and shut down beaches along the coast in the midst of summer’s last hurrah.
While forecasters remain confident the centre of the monster storm will remain far offshore, the outer edges are likely to bring damaging tropical-force winds, large swells and life-threatening rip currents into Friday.
Warnings about rip currents have been posted from Florida to the New England coast with New York City closing its beaches to swimming on Wednesday and Thursday. Several Long Island and New Jersey beaches also will be off-limits.
“Enjoy the shore, enjoy this beautiful weather but stay out of the water,” New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said Tuesday.
Off Massachusetts, Nantucket Island could see waves of more than three metres later this week. But the biggest threat is along the barrier islands of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, where evacuations have been ordered. One town asked residents to secure their trash cans so they don’t float or blow away.
Erin has become an unusually large and deceptively worrisome storm while moving through the Caribbean, with its tropical storm winds stretching 370 kilometres from its core. Forecasters expect it will grow larger in size as it moves through the Atlantic and curls north. It continued to lash the Turks and Caicos Islands on Tuesday, where government services were suspended a day earlier and residents were ordered to stay home, along with parts of the Bahamas before its expected turn toward Bermuda and the U.S.
By Tuesday, Erin had lost some strength from previous days and dropped to a Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 170 km/h, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said. It was about 990 kilometres southsoutheast of North Carolina’s Cape Hatteras.
Tropical storm watches were issued for Virginia and North Carolina as well as Bermuda.
Rough ocean conditions already have been seen along the U.S. coast – at least 60 swimmers were rescued from rip currents Monday at Wrightsville Beach, near Wilmington, N.C.
The biggest swells along the East Coast are expected over the coming two days.
Climate scientists say Atlantic hurricanes are now much more likely to rapidly intensify into powerful and catastrophic storms fueled by warmer oceans.
On the Outer Banks, Erin’s storm surge could swamp roads with waves of 4.6 metres.
This article was written by the Associated Press and was published in the Toronto Star on August 17, 2025.
Hurricane Erin exploded in strength to a Category 5 storm in Atlantic waters just north of the Caribbean on Saturday, rapidly powering up from a tropical storm in a single day, the National Hurricane Center said.
While the compact hurricane’s centre was not expected to strike land, it threatened to dump flooding rains in the northeast Caribbean as it continued to grow larger.
The first Atlantic hurricane of 2025, Erin ramped up from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in a mere 24 hours. By late Saturday morning, its maximum sustained winds had more than doubled to 255 km/h.
Mike Brennen, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, said Erin grew into a “very powerful hurricane,” with its winds gaining 96 km/h in about nine hours.
The centre said Erin should begin to slowly weaken Monday as the storm encounters increased wind shear. However forecasters predicted that it will remain a major hurricane until late in the week.
The hurricane remained a Category 5 storm Saturday evening, when it was located 220 kilometres northwest of Anguilla and moving west at 24 km/h. The storm’s centre was forecast to remain at sea, passing 233 kilometres north of Puerto Rico, according to the centre.
Tropical storm watches were issued for St. Martin, St. Barts and St. Maarten and the centre warned that heavy rain in some areas could trigger flash flooding, landslides and mudslides. The Turks and Caicos Islands southeast of the Bahamas were also under a tropical storm watch.
Though compact, with hurricaneforce winds extending 45 kilometres from its centre, Erin was expected to double or even triple in size in the coming days.
Powerful rip currents could affect the U.S. East Coast from Florida to the midAtlantic next week, despite the eye of the storm forecast to remain far offshore, Brennan said.
Hurricane specialist Michael Lowry said Erin gained strength at a pace that was “incredible for any time of year, let alone August 16th.”
Lowry said only four other Category 5 hurricanes have been recorded in the Atlantic on or before Aug. 16. The most powerful storms tend to form later in the year, with the hurricane season typically peaking in midSeptember.
Including Erin, there have been 43 hurricanes that have reached Category 5 status in the Atlantic, said Dan Pydynowski, senior meteorologist at AccuWeather.
Storm system expected to dissipate by Friday morning, U.S. agency says
This article was written by the Associated Press and was published in the Toronto Star on June 20, 2025.
Powerful Hurricane Erick made landfall in Mexico’s southern state of Oaxaca early Thursday as a major hurricane before moving inland and weakening to a tropical storm as it dumped heavy rain, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
The hurricane’s centre was located about 60 kilometres northnortheast of Acapulco Thursday afternoon.
Its maximum sustained winds were clocked at 85 km/h. It was moving northwest at 19 km/h, the hurricane centre said.
The storm was downgraded slightly before making landfall, from a powerful Category 4 to a Category 3.
The storm threaded the needle between the resorts of Acapulco and Puerto Escondido, tearing into a sparsely populated stretch of coastline near the border of Oaxaca and Guerrero states. Agricultural fields blanket the lowlying coastal area between small fishing villages.
Erick weakened rapidly as it crashed into the coastal mountains of southern Mexico, and the system is likely to dissipate early Friday, the hurricane centre said.
The storm threatened to unleash destructive winds near where the eye crashes ashore, flash floods and a dangerous storm surge, forecasters said.
At first light Thursday, Acapulco awoke under ominous dark clouds. Rain started later in the morning with the arrival of stronger winds. There was light traffic in the streets.
Some residents shopped in the few open stores, fishermen went to the shore to check their boats and a few people took advantage of the calm for a quick swim.
However, the storm moved northwest just inland up the coast through midday, bringing heavy rain to the resort and the mountains that tower dramatically above it.
Still, it appeared Acapulco had dodged the worst at least in terms of Erick’s strong winds.
Late Wednesday, Erick’s projected path had crept south, closer to the resort city of Puerto Escondido in Oaxaca state with Acapulco up the coast to the northwest.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Thursday “the people have reacted very well so far.”
National Civil Defence Coordinator Laura Velázquez said Thursday that at the moment there were no reports of injuries.
Forecasters expected Erick to lash Mexico’s Pacific coast with heavy rain, strong winds and a fierce storm surge. Rains of up to 40 centimetres could fall across the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Guerrero, with lesser totals in Chiapas, Michoacan, Colima and Jalisco states, the centre said. The rainfall threatened flooding and mudslides.
Pair of `once in a century’ rainfalls hit within a span of 32 days
This article was written by Kate Allen and was published in the Toronto Star on December 31, 2024.
An officer looks on as vehicles sit in water at Parkside and Lake Shore after heavy rain caused flooding in the area on July 16.
The Star looks back at some of the most captivating stories of the year.
Abandoned cars, waterfalls in subway stations, power and phone lines dead: the flash flooding that overwhelmed the GTA on July 16 was incredibly dramatic. But perhaps the highest drama scene of all was the rescue of 114 residents from the Tyndall nursing home in Mississauga, some transported by firefighters on rafts.
Enough rain fell to qualify as a 100 year storm — one so extreme that it should be uncommon. But city officials, surveying the damage, noted three such storms had fallen in 11 years, and voiced fears about the toll of climate change.
They did not know how much more extreme it would get.
On Aug. 17, another storm dumped a torrent of rain on Mississauga, this time breaking the single day rainfall record at Pearson airport. It was the second “once in a century” storm to hit the area in the span of 32 days.
No news cameras were present when the Tyndall nursing home flooded a second time, leaving water marks even higher on the walls than the month before. With residents still scattered in what were supposed to be temporary accommodations, the nursing home’s ownership concluded returning to the building would be too risky, and decided to tear it down instead.
Demolition began this month. “People think `Oh yeah, you’re back in and everything is great, and you’ve got the Christmas tree up and happy hoho,’ ” says Shirley ThomasWeir, CEO of Sharon Village Care Homes. “That hasn’t been our journey.”
Tyndall’s story illustrates the extent to which 2024’s deluges brought a reckoning to the region, forcing officials and residents to grapple with how to respond when rare emergencies become regular. The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) says it will examine whether the definition of a century storm should change, while the leadership of Tyndall are searching for a longer term care facility to house still displaced vulnerable seniors.
Visiting the stricken building to oversee the removal of remaining belongings in early December, Thomas Weir said she was heartened by the continued positivity of staff and residents. A new residence is already underway on the same site, but won’t be ready for at least two more years.
“As I stand out here in the freezing cold, I look up and I just think, `Gosh, this home has gone through so much adversity, and people remain strong,’ ” she said.
“It’s been a wild ride for Tyndall.” When rain started sheeting down in July, the home was lucky no residents were on the first floor. “In under half an hour, it went from `I think there’s a little bit of water leaking in’ to `we have to take high ground,’ ” ThomasWeir told the Star that day. Garbage bins floated in the parking lot; windows smashed. “It started to get frightening.”
A metre and a half of water rushed in, reaching halfway up the building’s front doors. Mississauga firefighters responded with inflatable orange rafts, taking some residents to safety by water rescue and using pumps until the water receded enough for others to leave on their own.
The rescue took over 12 hours, with emergency responders from Toronto and other jurisdictions helping out. All 114 residents were safely evacuated to hotels and other longterm care homes.
Professionals hired to consult on the safety of the building were still doing an assessment a month later when the second storm hit, bringing even higher floodwaters.
A 100 year storm is a statistical probability, not a guaranteed schedule. All it means is that a storm of a certain intensity has a 1 per cent chance of occurring in a given year in a particular location. Getting two in a shorter span isn’t impossible. The way the math shakes out, there is a roughly one in four chance of two falling on the same house in a 30 year period, the length of an average mortgage. Some of the 100 year storms that hit the GTA in the past two decades also fell over different areas.
That is not true of the July and August storms, which hit the exact same bullseye. While the July storm dumped water on a wide area and the August one was more narrowly focused, the highest rainfall totals for both were measured at the TRCA’s Rathwood rain gauge, near Eglinton Avenue East and Highway 403 — across the street from The Tyndall nursing home.
At a certain point, the odds of back to back storms become so unlikely that it makes sense to go back to the drawing board and see whether the storm size probabilities have shifted. Another way of putting this: if someone wins the lottery three times in 11 years and twice in the same summer, are they just incredibly lucky, or is that lottery rigged? Climate change works a bit like a rigged lottery, loading the dice so that extreme weather events — intense rainfall, dangerous heatwaves, powerful hurricanes — happen more often.
The conservation authority is now trying to answer that question. In September, the TRCA initiated work on a report to analyze the two back to back storms in Mississauga, David Kellershohn, associate director of engineering services, says. Part of that analysis, which is expected to be completed by outside consultants by early 2026, will use rain gauge data from Pearson Airport to determine whether the definition of a 100year storm there has changed.
Storm return periods — what a 10 year, 50 year, or 100 year storm looks like — are used to size sewers and other infrastructure, to make sure cities are built to handle flooding. Both Toronto’s and Mississauga’s current infrastructure, it is safe to say, are ill equipped to handle repeated storms like those of summer 2024: insured losses for just the July flood reached almost $1 billion. Combined with other catastrophes nationwide, 2024 easily broke the record for the costliest year of weather disasters ever, topping $7.7 billion by late September.
Thomas Weir says the uncertainty of whether this summer was an outlier or a new normal pushed Tyndall’s leadership to decide to demolish. If they could not be sure whether another storm would come along and flood the building again, they would never feel safe enough to return residents to that building.
The decision to tear down Tyndall was as much psychological as structural, she says. Some residents are in wheelchairs, while others have cognitive impairments.
“Every time it rains, is the building going to be flooded? Can we ever bring a resident down to the first floor safely?”
While no one was injured, the mass displacement still brought aftershocks. An abrupt change in environment can cause seniors with neurological impairments to become disoriented. Thomas Weir says all staff remain in their jobs and have tried to maintain some continuity for residents. Of the initial 114 residents, 48 remain — some have moved, some have died — and are living at long term care homes throughout the region.
The consequences have also trickled down to other, previously unconnected families. Rena Ellinas’ 87 year old father, who lives in Etobicoke and has dementia, suffered a medical crisis earlier this year. After an extended stay in hospital, he was put on the long term care crisis placement list — a designation that boosts priority for an open bed. But none were available for weeks, Ellinas’ says, because the Tyndall residents were taking up so many in the area.
“Obviously those people are priority, but my dad and people like him were bumped lower down, because you have to address the emergency at hand,” says Ellinas.
Ellinas was frustrated by the lack of clarity, and the fact that no one could give her a date when Tyndall might reopen. Her mother, who is 88, was her father’s primary caregiver.
“Give me a timeline. Like, you know, my mom is breaking down,” Ellinas said.
“There’s a toll on the caregivers.” Her father was eventually placed in a long term care home in mid October.
Thomas Weir said the nursing home is looking for a temporary building to bring everyone back together until the new Tyndall building is finished, which could be the end of 2026 or beginning of 2027. They’ve found a potential site, but it requires renovations.
“It continues to be an incredible journey for the residents, families and the staff.”
Determination to rebuild state follows after back-to-back storms
This article was written by Russ Bynum and Laura Bargfeld, and was published in the Toronto Star on October 14, 2024.
Residents assess the damage Sunday in Englewood, Fla., after Hurricane Milton passed through the area. Around 500,000 homes and businesses in Florida remain without electricity.
When ankle-deep floodwaters from Hurricane Helene bubbled up through the floors of their home, Kat Robinson-Malone and her husband sent a late-night text message to their neighbours two doors down: “Hey, we’re coming.”
The couple waded through the flooded street to the elevated front porch of Chris and Kara Sundar, whose home was built on higher ground, and handed over their eight-year-old daughter and a gas powered generator.
The Sundars’ lime-green house in southern Tampa also became a refuge for Brooke and Adam Carstensen, whose house next door to Robinson-Malone also flooded.
The three families met years earlier when their children became playmates, and the adults’ friendships deepened during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. So when Helene and Hurricane Milton struck Florida within two weeks of each other, the neighbours closed ranks as one big extended family, cooking meals together, taking turns watching children and cleaning out their damaged homes.
And as Milton threatened a direct strike on Tampa last week, the Malones, the Sundars and the Carstensens decided to evacuate together. They drove more than 725 kilometres in a caravan to metro Atlanta — seven adults, six children, four dogs and teenage Max Carstensen’s three pet rats.
“Everyone has, like, the chain saw or a tarp,” Robinson-Malone said Sunday. “But really the most important thing for us was the community we built. And that made all the difference for the hurricane rescue and the recovery. And now, hopefully, the restoration.”
Recovery efforts continued Sunday in storm-battered communities in central Florida, where President Joe Biden surveyed the devastation. Biden said he was thankful the damage from Milton was not as severe as officials had anticipated. But he said it was still a “cataclysmic” event for people caught in the path of the hurricane, which has been blamed for at least 11 deaths.
The number of homes and businesses in Florida still without electricity dropped to about 500,000 on Sunday, according to Poweroutage.us. That was down from more than three million after Milton made landfall Wednesday as a Category 3 storm. Fuel shortages also appeared to be easing as more gas stations opened, and lines at pumps in the Tampa area looked notably shorter. Gov. Ron DeSantis announced nine sites where people can get 38 litres each for free.
While recovery efforts were gaining steam, a full rebound will take far longer.
DeSantis cautioned that debris removal could take up to a year, even as Florida shifts nearly 3,000 workers to the cleanup. He said Biden has approved 100 per cent federal reimbursement for those efforts for 90 days. “The (removal of) debris has to be 24/7 over this 90-day period,” DeSantis said while speaking next to a pile of furniture, lumber and other debris in Treasure Island, an island city near St. Petersburg that has been battered by both recent hurricanes. “That’s the way you get the job done.”
National Weather Service meteorologist Paul Close said rivers will keep rising for the next several days and result in flooding, mostly around Tampa Bay and northward. Those areas got the most rain, which came on top of a wet summer that included several hurricanes.
Moody’s estimates economic costs from hurricane will range from $50B to $85B
This article was written by Russ Bynum, Brendan Farrington, and Ty Oneil, and was published in the Toronto Star on October 13, 2024.
Fuel distribution workers fill cars at a depot in Plant City, Fla., on Saturday. Gov. Ron DeSantis said the state has opened three fuel distribution sites and planned to open several more.
Floridians recovering from Hurricane Milton, many of whom were journeying home after fleeing hundreds of kilometres to escape the storm, spent much of Saturday searching for gas as a fuel shortage gripped the state.
In St. Petersburg, scores of people lined up at a station that had no gas, hoping it would arrive soon. Among them was Daniel Thornton and his nine-year-old daughter Magnolia, who arrived at the station at 7 a.m. and were still waiting four hours later. “They told me they have gas coming but they don’t know when it’s going to be here,” he said. “I have no choice. I have to sit here all day with her until I get gas.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters Saturday morning that the state opened three fuel distribution sites and planned to open several more. Residents can get 10 gallons (37.85 litres) each, free of charge, he said.
“Obviously as power gets restored … and the Port of Tampa is open, you’re going to see the fuel flowing. But in the meantime, we want to give people another option,” DeSantis said.
Officials were replenishing area gas stations with the state’s fuel stockpiles and provided generators to stations that remained without power.
The two hurricanes left a ruinous mess in the fishing village of Cortez, a community of 4,100 along the northern edge of Sarasota Bay. Residents of its modest, single-storey wood and stucco-fronted cottages were working to remove broken furniture and tree limbs, stacking the debris in the street much like they did after Hurricane Helene.
In Bradenton Beach, Jen Hilliard scooped up wet sand mixed with rocks and tree roots and dumped the mixture into a wheelbarrow.
“This was all grass,” Hilliard said of the sandy mess beneath her feet. “They’re going to have to make 500 trips of this.”
Milton killed at least 10 people after it made landfall as a Category 3 storm, tearing across central Florida, flooding barrier islands and spawning deadly tornadoes. Officials say the toll could have been worse if not for the widespread evacuations.
Overall, more than a thousand people had been rescued in the wake of the storm as of Saturday, DeSantis said.
On Sunday, President Joe Biden will survey the devastation inflicted on Florida’s Gulf Coast by the hurricane. He said he hopes to connect with DeSantis during the visit.
The trip offers Biden another opportunity to press Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson to call lawmakers back to Washington to approve more funding during their pre-election recess. It’s something Johnson says he won’t do.
Moody’s Analytics on Saturday estimated economic costs from the storm will range from $50 billion to $85 billion, including upwards of $70 billion in property damage and an economic output loss of up to $15 billion.
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