Utilities including power companies incurred heavy damage in Hurricane Fiona sparking calls from climatologists for infrastructure to be restored with climate change in mind. That means burying cables and erecting structures that can withstand storms of significant magnitude.

Bell Aliant describes the destruction to their infrastructure as something which they have never seen before. They lost about 1,500 telephone poles in Atlantic Canada, 138 cell towers in Atlantic Canada lost power during the hurricane and backup generator power lasted for only 12 hours until it has to be refueled.

The Chair of Bell Atlantic, Glen LeBlanc, says there’s no question that, in the future, they’re going to have to build bigger, better and wiser. He and other executives from the company were on the ground in the Port aux Basques area yesterday.

They shipped in 150 generators as well as personnel from Ontario and Quebec prior to the hurricane. They could have used more.

They shipped in 400,000 litres of excess fuel for the generators in the event that they were going to have problems but LeBlance says they could have used a million litres, as many fuel depots were down because they had no electricity.