From Dave Swick's column in today's Halifax Daily News:
How violent was Juan? We now have some numbers to help us calculate how quickly the devastation occurred. They are shocking. HRM property manager Mike Labrecque estimates upward of 40,000 trees fell in Point Pleasant Park alone. When you consider that the height of the storm lasted, at most, three hours, or 10,800 seconds, you can make a brutal calculation. On average, throughout that time, four trees per second were falling in Point Pleasant Park.Amazing numbers.The dismal scorecard gets worse. Labrecque also says 40 trees are down in the Public Gardens, at least 600 street trees fell in Halifax and Dartmouth (meaning city-owned trees only, not trees in yards), and another 40,000 to 50,000 trees fell in other city-owned property in HRM.
...
Down in Point Pleasant Park, dead trees lying in piles weren’t the only surprise for the estimated 30,000 people who walked through on the weekend. The dead trees were horrible, but they were expected. Not expected, and so even more striking, were that vast expanses of the park are now open to the sky. The canopy of trees gone, much of the park has been laid bare. Point Pleasant will rise again, but it won’t be the same leafy refuge.
Comments
Arthur - October 22, 2003 6:22 PM
A lot of trees were uprooted here too, particularly around Queen street (it looks like a pretty boring place after Juan). The day after the storm, when driving out and around the town, the first thing I thought was that most of the trees must have uprooted because of water saturation of the soil. I still stand by that conclusion.
Alan - December 9, 2003 9:50 AM
Another update from CBC NS on the Public Gardens in Halifax. The work is beginning to spend the over 1 million gathered from the public to restore the park.