“From my point of view, this could have been avoided,” says Nicholas Holland’s son
Robie Holland doesn’t understand why his father drove down a road that was quickly filling with water as 250 millimeters of rain fell in a rural area of Nova Scotia.
“Why was the road accessible? That’s the main question I keep asking myself…. People couldn’t travel on those roads because they were flooded. “Why is it a free-for-all out in the rural areas?” he asked in an interview on Friday.
“From my point of view, this could have been avoided.”
Nicholas Holland, who was 52, was one of the four people who died in the historic flooding in the interior of Canada on July 22. The water rushed over rural Route 14 near Brooklyn, N.S., which is northwest of Halifax, and swept two cars into a hayfield.
In an interview, Robie Holland, 25, and his sister Sophie Holland, 23, said that they were thankful for the efforts of searchers that night, but that questions about how the flooding disaster was handled need to be answered by an independent investigation.
Questions include why it took so long to send a Ready Alert telling drivers to stay off the road after the deputy chief of the Brooklyn volunteer fire department asked for one at 1:22 a.m. Provincial emergency management officials sent out the alert at 3:06 a.m., about a half hour after police say the taxi Holland and three other people were in went into the water.
“If they were stuck on the highway and got a message saying, “Don’t go down to this area,” they wouldn’t have. Robie Holland said, “They’re going to change their plans.”
What happened to Hollan
Holland’s two children said that survivors told them that after their rock musician father finished a show in Windsor, N.S., early on July 22, he and his girlfriend left for their home in nearby St. Croix. But his partner’s car got stuck in a pool of water on the highway.
The Holland siblings say that the two of them called a taxi, and the driver kept going to their house. As the cab turned a corner on Route 14, it was pulled into a hayfield by water that was moving quickly.
Robie Holland said that his father, who had hurt his knee in an accident years before, still kicked the windows out of the sinking car, letting the four people inside escape. He said, “He gave everyone a chance to live.”
The son said that his father’s girlfriend and the taxi driver were able to hold on to things that kept them from being swept away, but the driver’s 14-year-old daughter and Holland, who was not a strong swimmer, were carried away by the current.
Since then, people have found the dead bodies of Holland and Keddy. Colton Sisco and Natalie Harnish, both six years old, died when another car went off the road around the same time.
Robie and Sophie Holland said it makes them feel better to think about how hard their father worked to help other people and how hard the people who spent days looking for the bodies worked. “I’m sad, but I’m thankful for them,” Sophie said.
But they say they are still worried that the province and people in charge of emergency management can’t act faster in rural areas.
Robie said that by 9 p.m. on the night of the torrential rainfall, he was being turned away by police on streets in Halifax, and this left him questioning why similar blockades weren’t in place in the Municipality of West Hants where his father died.
Meanwhile, Sophie Holland, a physiotherapist, said her generation is facing deepening challenges from climate change and she’s looking for better preparations from governments at all levels.
“[Political leaders] say ‘Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims,’ but if you’d done something earlier, things might be different,” she said.
Blair Feltmate, director of the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation at the University of Waterloo, is among those calling for an independent review to examine shortcomings in Nova Scotia’s storm response. His centre gave Nova Scotia a grade of C in a 2019 study assessing provinces’ flooding preparedness.
It noted the province was the only one in Atlantic Canada that delegates responsibility for flood plain mapping to local governments, and that the province “does not provide incentives for the relocation of developments from flood plain zones.”
Province says it will conduct revie
The provincial Department of Public Works said Friday it could not provide details about road closures during the storm. “Staff continue to work hard to restore access to damaged roads and bridges impacted by the extreme flooding,” spokesperson Gary Andrea said. “We will be reviewing measures taken during the July 21 weekend once our work is complete.”
Sophie and Robie Holland say they are looking for improvements to happen quickly.
“Are we prepared?” asked Sophie. “What changes are we going to make going forward? Obviously we weren’t prepared for this.”