A search continued Sunday for four people, including two children, reported missing after torrential downpours in Nova Scotia caused severe flooding in several areas of the province.
RCMP Cpl. Guillaume Tremblay said efforts were continuing in the area of West Hants, a largely rural municipality northwest of Halifax where the people were reported missing in separate incidents on Saturday.
Tremblay said a dive recovery team conducted an underwater search of the field Saturday evening and located an unoccupied pick-up truck believed to be the vehicle the children were travelling in.
He said the truck was submerged in over two metres of water, adding the search was continuing in the same area for all four people and a second vehicle.
"We are talking about flood waters that have zero visibility, so that definitely makes searching difficult where divers have to do a search according to touch," Tremblay said in an interview. "We are mobilizing industrial (pumping) equipment to try to lower the water levels."
Police were being assisted by a team from the Department of Natural Resources and ground search and rescue teams from West Hants, Colchester and Valley, he said.
"We're going to keep searching and we're not going to give up hope," Tremblay said.
Police did not release any details about the four missing people.
They said earlier the children were with three other people who managed to escape from a vehicle that got stuck in floodwaters. A second vehicle carrying four people was also submerged and two people escaped, but a youth and a man remain unaccounted for.
"Our heart goes out to the families, it's hard to even fathom what a person thinks or feels when faced with that situation," Abraham Zebian, Mayor of West Hants Regional Municipality, said in an interview. "We are just praying for a good (search) result."
Zebian also confirmed that a municipal evacuation order that had been issued for the area was lifted early Sunday. People were allowed to return to their homes and businesses, he said.
And while the floodwater had largely receded by Sunday afternoon, it left behind a network of destroyed roads and bridges in the area. Flooding on the Meander River and Crawford Brook in West Hants washed out two bridges and a road, a vital link for one family.
Will Mounce said his 97-year-old aunt, Irene Harvey, requires daily visits from personal care workers for everything from medication to meals.
"Our concern always is, our bridge is our lifeline," Mounce said. "To have it out of commission for a long period of time, we're trying to work around it."
Mounce's family is taking turns preparing meals and is working on forging a path for a tractor to access the main highway. He built his home on the bank of the Meander River, just down the hill from the family homestead where he grew up.
"I know I live on a floodplain," he said, surveying what's left of a washed-out bridge. "This is something I was always scared would happen. But I was sort of hoping, if it's a 100 year storm, that I would expire before that 100 years comes around."
His uncle, Howard Harvey, said the flooded brook knocked out the foundation of his barn, which held decades worth of farm equipment and memories.
Harvey, 92, began farming Hereford cattle in the 1950s, and only just recently retired.
"I have never seen a storm like that," he said. "Just so long lasting. I don't know how many hours of rain we had."
Just down the road from a popular provincial campground is Shirley's Pizza, where owner Bobby Maskine said he walked in on Saturday morning and initially thought the roof on the nearly 200-year-old building had collapsed. Instead, he discovered the basement was full of about four metres of murky, brown floodwater.
He believes his store will be closed for weeks, "a major hit" in the height of tourism season.
"I'm trying to keep myself calm because everyone is going through it," he said. "There's disaster everywhere, but this is the worst time of year for this to happen, for sure."
Environment Canada meteorologist Bob Robichaud said the heavy rain, which began Friday, dumped between 200 and 250 millimetres along the province's South Shore, across the Halifax area and into central and western parts of Nova Scotia.
He said the weather system was expected to pass through Cape Breton and out of the province by mid-day Sunday after drenching the island and eastern Nova Scotia with about 175 millimetres of rain.
Premier Tim Houston declared a provincewide state of emergency on Saturday, which will remain in effect until Aug. 5 unless the government terminates or extends it.
Hammonds Plains, Bedford and Lower Sackville were the hardest hit areas of the Halifax region where more than 200 millimetres of rain flooded roads, parking lots and sports fields.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 23, 2023.
This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Meta and Canadian Press News Fellowship.
