A year after Fiona, a traumatized Newfoundland town backs away from the sea

One year after a wave driven by post-tropical storm Fiona slammed into the back of her house and twisted it like a corkscrew, some residents of Port aux Basques, N.L., are backing away from the sea.

One year after a wave driven by post-tropical storm Fiona slammed into the back of her house and twisted it like a corkscrew, Lori Dicks now lives up on a hill, far from the water.

She still has a view of the ocean, but she's far enough away that there's no chance it will swell up and swallow her entire life again like it did on the morning of Sept. 24, 2022, in Port aux Basques, N.L.

"I still think about it all the time. So much change has happened for us, for everyone. Even the whole town I find is affected, even the landscape has changed," she said in a recent interview from her new home across the province in Burin Bay Arm, N.L. "On our side of the street where all our homes were, it's completely gone. All of our homes are torn down now."

Fiona destroyed about 100 homes that morning in southwestern Newfoundland, and a 73-year-old woman died when she was swept out to sea. Houses that had belonged to families for generations were washed away or destroyed, and some lost everything inside their home.

Dicks and her husband Claude had lived in their Port aux Basques home for nearly three decades. They raised their daughter there. After Fiona cracked its foundation, the house was deemed too dangerous to return to, and it was condemned. Dicks was allowed back in for a brief time to remove what she could.

She feels lucky she was able to salvage anything at all.

Port aux Basques has now established what it calls the high-impact zone -- an area deemed to be most at risk for severe damage from storms, even those with a fraction of Fiona's power. Some residents call it the "Fiona line."