Several trees in King's Square in Saint John were blown over by high winds during post-tropical storm Dorian on Sept. 7, 2019. (Photo: Brad Perry/Wave News)
Chainsaws will be a common sound in Saint John as crews continue to clean up from post-tropical storm Dorian.
Winds gusting up to 95 kilometres per hour Saturday night took down dozens of trees throughout the city.
But it is the damage in the historic King’s Square uptown which has shocked many people. Several large trees — some believed to be 200 years old — were knocked over like toothpicks.
Chris Gaudet, an arborist with the city, said there are many factors which led to the significant damage in the historic park.
“The direction of the wind this time, it came more out of the northeast and there’s not a whole lot of shelter on that side of the park,” said Gaudet. “With all the rains, and as dry as the ground has been, you get that much rain and it just saturates the ground and it loosens everything.”
The fact the trees were in full leaves also put a lot of resistance up to the winds, he said.
Crews are hard at work in King’s Square in #SaintJohn cleaning up the damage caused by #Dorian. Here’s city arborist Chris Gaudet working to remove one of the several trees which fell. pic.twitter.com/VApD9qkYAy
— Brad Perry (@BradMPerry) September 9, 2019
City staff said they have received about 130 reports of damaged trees in the days since Dorian.
Marc Doucet, an operations director with the city, said they were fortunate not to receive a lot of infrastructure damage.
“For example, here in King’s Square, if one of these trees would’ve fallen in the bandstand, we would be in a lot worse shape than we are now,” Doucet said, “so we have been fortunate in that aspect, but we’re still uncovering damage as it comes.”
Mayor Don Darling said the topic of trees has lit up his social media and email over the past couple of days.
“I think folks are heartbroken and we’re now into a conversation of how do we make something good out of this bad circumstance with these fallen trees,” Darling said.
“These trees are likely, some of them, 200 years old. I was almost brought to tears [Sunday] when I came up. I’m heartbroken to lose these trees.”
Several trees in King’s Square in Saint John were blown over by high winds during post-tropical storm Dorian on Sept. 7, 2019. (Photo: Brad Perry/Wave News)
The city has said it will explore options to salvage some of the wood once the trees have been removed.
Darling said a lot of ideas have come forward about what could be done with the wood.
“Social Enterprise [Hub] has approached me to say, we make furniture but we’re more than a furniture maker. We take people from living on the street, teach them carpentry skills, who build custom furniture. Wouldn’t that be amazing for some of this wood,” he said.
Darling said someone also suggested turning some of the wood into boards and line the walls of the new council chamber. But, he said, the first priority is to make the park safe again for the public.
Both Gaudet and Doucet expect it will take a couple of weeks to clean up the damage.
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