by Jeff Colbourne
Northern News Services

NNSL (Oct 20/97) - Much of Nunavut spent the last few days cleaning up after being battered by hurricane-force winds over the past week.

Communities along the Hudson Bay coast were hardest hit, as 120- to 140-km/h winds knocked down utility poles, destroyed homes and sunk, beached or threw ashore boats.

Heavy snow last Monday night and rain the next day, mixed with high winds, made walking and driving treacherous in communities such as Cape Dorset.

It was so bad, in fact, that the town was placed under a state of emergency said Cape Dorset RCMP Cpl. Jim Forsey.

"There's been numerous vehicles that have blown off the road and boats beached or turned over," he said last week.

"It's windy enough to knock a man over."

Hall Beach only had one really bad day, but that one day was a tough one. Six power poles were knocked down by the fierce winds on Tuesday, says acting administrative officer Anne Curley.

That cut off power to six houses, but they were quickly supplied with portable heaters and Coleman stoves on which to cook, she said.

The only other damage was to a porch, which was ripped off a house, she said.

NWT Power Corporation crews flew in on a charter and had the power restored to all the houses by Thursday morning.

As quickly as the weather arrived, it left, and Curley said the weather on Wednesday night was practically balmy.

"It felt like springtime when the snow is melting," she said. "The ice was kind of slushy underfoot."

In Whale Cove, power was knocked out at the airport after the winds blew down and destroyed 12 power line poles.

Residents in Rankin Inlet were picking up the pieces last Friday after some of the highest winds ever to blow across the barrens knocked down trailers, stripped chimneys of homes and damaged boats moored in the harbors.

Elders in the community said they couldn't remember when it had been so windy.

The hamlet was also cut off from the outside world for more than a day.

"The winds in Rankin Inlet knocked our satellite dishes out of alignment, interrupting long distance service," said Anne Grainger, director of corporate communications with NorthwesTel.

She said the phone lines -- including Internet connections -- could not be fixed until NWT Power Corp linesmen repaired poles.

Unfortunately, the two men based in Rankin Inlet were weathered in at Igloolik and Baker Lake.

By late Wednesday afternoon the phones in the community was back in service.

In Chesterfield Inlet houses shook for three days and some people reported they saw their windows pushing in from the force of the wind.

Many people in Nunavut last week were calling the high winds a hurricane but according to Lisa Coldwells, a meteorologist with Environment Canada in Edmonton, "The low was not what you would think of as a hurricane."

It was a "hurricane wind force warning," which is often directed towards marine traffic when winds are 64 knots or greater.

"We've been watching this one develop for three or four days," Coldwells said last Tuesday .

"It's quite a doozy."