MARGARETSVILLE, N.S. — Before the power came back on mid-day Sept. 12, firefighters in Margaretsville were scrambling to find a way to communicate with the outside world after Hurricane Dorian knocked out power and phone service Sept. 7.
“Unfortunately the fire service is hurting,” said firefighter Jodi Johnston Sept. 11. “Without phone service we don’t have the ability to be paged out by Valley dispatch in case of an emergency.”
But that wasn’t the only problem.
“We're running out of water in the reservoir,” he said. “That will not only leave those on municipal water without water but will greatly limit the ability of the fire service to use the hydrants.”
Within two hours of talking to Nova Scotia Public Safety and Field Communications, Mark Turner arrived at the fire hall with radios that work on the province’s Trunked Mobile Radio system, which would allow Valley Communications to page them in the event of an emergency. And it would allow firefighters to communicate with each other.
“I’m providing them with portables that they will be able to receive information from Valley Communications, their paging centre,” Turner said. “It won’t be in the form of a physical page. It will be in the form of a voice call over the radio. So at least they’ll have a notification.”
“This is certainly going to help us out a great deal, a tremendous amount,” said Johnston.
While it was an improvement given the circumstances, it still didn’t solve the question of how people could contact 911.
“That’s the big problem,” Johnston said. “I believe the cell service is a little better today (Sept. 11). So hopefully they can still get through to 911 through their cell service. I hope, I wish that Bell will have their landline system up today. But I haven’t heard either way what they’re doing.”
Turner grabbed eight of the TMR radios from the back of his van, attached the antennas, and threw in chargers. Margaretsville firefighters could have the radios for the duration of the emergency.
As for the water, Johnston said the reservoir, that’s usually up to 10 feet was down to two feet and would require Annapolis County to bring out a generator to power the pumps to top it off. And that appears to have happened.
“Power came on at 11:15 this morning,” Johnston said Sept. 12. “The paging system is up and running now that the phone lines have been restored.”
Although he hadn’t heard back from Regional Emergency Measures Organization at the county office, he later saw activity at the reservoir. Brian Orde, who heads up REMO, confirmed that Annapolis County crews had been out and took care of it.
The county had issued an advisory to users of water from the various water utilities in the county urging them to limit their water use during the power outages.
