High waves hit Grise Fiord
Water damages community freezer, structures and roadway
Jessica Davey-Quantick
Northern News Services
Monday, August 29, 2016
AUSUITTUQ/GRISE FIORD
Unusually high waves battered Canada's most Northern community on the evening of Aug. 19 and into the morning of Aug. 20, but resident Larry Audlaluk was nonplussed by the waves, which he says were forecast to be up to three metres, or 10 feet, high.
Water washes out a road in Grise Fiord on Aug. 19 and 20. Waves crested to between two and three metres. - photo courtesy of Bernard Ungalaaq Maktar |
"We're all veterans. We're from Grise Fiord ... Over the years that we've lived here we've learned how to look after things and ourselves. We take precautions," he said, adding that the preparations this time were "nothing out of the ordinary."
"We just prepared for the eventuality of what was happening and the freezer was (the) only casualty," he said.
High tides caused by the moon, said Audlaluk, combined with steady rain to create the extreme weather. Environment Canada recorded about 85 millimetres of rain in Grise Fiord in the two days leading up to the high swells.
"Longtime residents of Grise Fiord told me this is the first time they have seen a storm like this in Grise Fiord," stated Bernard Ungalaaq Maktar in an e-mail to Nunavut News/North. He took pictures of the storm and said that despite a lack of strong winds, he saw waves he estimates at up to two metres, or six feet, high.
Erosion has been steadily eating away at the coastline for years, meaning infrastructure, including the community freezer, that originally was a safe distance from shore is now precariously close.
Audlaluk says when the freezer was originally built in the 1980s, it was on the beach, above the tide line.
"At the time it wasn't too bad, it was quite safe from the high tides but ... the tides have been slowly eroding the beach, the shoreline. With the high tide it wouldn't have effected it still, it was still safe, but that strong waves hitting, it was too close," he said.
The water shifted the building from its foundation.
"Half of the foundation got weak, part of the building towards the sea went down," said Audlaluk. "The floor tilted a little bit and you could see through it."
Thankfully, he says, the goods inside the freezer escaped unharmed. "It hit the cutting room luckily, the main freezer was fine, where the goods are, fortunately."
The swells also endangered shacks along the shore as well as boats, sleds and snowmobiles, which had to be moved a safe distance away, and parts of the road near the shore.
"All along the shoreline the roads got affected," said Audlaluk. Despite this, he says that it was business as usual just days later when the sealift arrived.
"We'd been very busy this weekend and this week, back to back. We dealt with this storm ... and then a grace of one day in between to clean up and put things back to order, and then two days later we had to deal with the sealift," said Audlaluk.
"Luckily everything was pretty much back to normal, although some of the road areas were not filled yet, but dealing with the sealift was something we had to do anyway. We were able to look after the sealift, everything so happens that things work out fine. Like I said, we're all veterans of dealing with situations when it comes to things like strong winds and high waves,"
