It looks more like flooding
season in most of New Brunswick--but the province is warning that forest-fire
season in New Brunswick starts today and ends in late October.
Natural
Resources Minister Paul Robichaud urging people to be careful and make sure
fires are not carelessly ignited. The DNR encourages people to mulch, compost or
haul debris to the dump instead of burning it. A burning permit from the
department is required for most fires.
Grass fires are also a major
concern in the early spring and can cause serious damage. For more information,
click here
A soldier based at CFB Petawawa,
who reportedly went to high school in Saint John, is facing 18 new sex charges.
Police in
the Ottawa Valley say there are several dozen more women who were potential
victims and may not know it.
31 year old Corporal Derrick
Gallagher is charged with eight new counts of sexual assault, nine counts of
voyeurism and one count of assault. That's on top of the eight charges of sexual
assault and two counts of voyeurism laid on April 1st.Police say there are videos and
they have been able to identify 18 women but there are more than 50 other women
who have not yet been identified. Gallagher serves with the 1st
Battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment and did one tour of duty in
Afghanistan.
The St John River in the
Fredericton area has risen higher than expected, due to the upper basin
tributaries dumping larger volumes of water.
The water level exceeded flood
stage last night at 7.35 metres and is receding with the expectation of being
below flood stage by Saturday.
McMinniman Court, Jarvis Street, Timber
Lane and Hazelwood at Riverside Drive remain closed. Boaters are also asked to
stay off the river. Conditions are not safe and the river may have hazardous
debris floating in it.
A single mom from Sussex living
in a duplex near the river rolling out of bed to put her feet in
water.
Wendy
Inkpen says she has nothing now after the flood waters filled her basement
apartment.
She tells us she stayed up til about 12:30am on Wednesday and
didn't see any water and she woke up after 8am and swung her feet out of bed
hitting the cold water and at that time the water was up to her knees.
Inkpen says the highest level was chest-high and while the water level
has gone down her apartment is now full of mud.
The federal government has
announced $228,000 in funding to support safer organ and tissue donation in New
Brunswick, and across Canada.
MP Rodney Weston made that announcement
this morning at Saint Joseph's Hospital on behalf of Health Minister Rona
Ambrose, explaining the money will help develop a standardized process for
collecting data on when something goes wrong with an organ transplant so that
can be prevented in the future.
Saint Joseph's will be home to one of
five pilot programs at sites throughout Canada.
New Brunswick's Eye and
Tissue Bank is the only project of its kind in Atlantic Canada, and currently in
this province, there is no system to collect data on adverse events related to
organ transplants.
Photo: Corneas at Saint Joseph's
Hospital
City Police converging on the
area behind Simonds High after receiving a report of a man getting out of a
silver van, taking out a bag and a mask as well as what appeared to be a rifle
before walking into the woods.Police questioned several teens
who were going to meet for a game of paintball in the woods before finding the
person they were looking for.
The first hospital-based 3T MRI
scanner in Atlantic Canada will be installed at the Regional Hospital during the
spring. The
Saint John Regional Hospital Foundation announcing it will fundraise and donate
$1.5 million to the project. The 3T scanner can capture
faster, more detailed images.
It's estimated the 3T scanner will increase
patient output by 20 per cent and result in reduced wait times for MRI
patients.
Premier David Alward making the
trek to Sussex and Sussex Corner to see first hand what sort of damage was
caused by the flooding. He has nothing but praise for
those people who stepped up to the plate to make the best of a disastrous
situation. Alward says he was blown away when he saw a photo of the flooded Tim
Hortons in Sussex that was texted to him while he was at the funeral in Toronto
of the late Jim Flaherty.
There are renewed fears of
flooding in Perth-Andover. As a precautionatry measure, the Hotel Dieu Hospital
in Perth-Andover has been evacuated and people who live in the low lying areas
of the village are being asked to voluntarily evacuate their
homes. Mayor
Terry Ritchie says of concern is a 40 kilometer ice floe above the village at
Grand Falls. Tide News asked Ritchie whether any flooding, should it occur, be
as devastating as it was a couple of years ago and he's not ready to discount
the possibility. Ritchie is hoping for mild days and cold nights to ease the
snow and ice melt.
Drivers who fill up with self
serve regular taking a price hit after the weekly setting. The maximum price rising by 4 and
a half cents a litre and also an increase in the price of diesel with the max
rising by just over a cent a litre.
The St John River in the
Fredericton area has risen higher than expected, due to the upper basin
tributaries dumping larger volumes of water.
The water level exceeded flood
stage last night at 7.2 metres.
Parts of Route 8 near Durham Bridge have
been closed due to high water levels and River Street is closed at Chase Street
due to water and ice over the road.
Flood waters started receding in
the Sussex area yesterday afternoon following extensive flooding caused
primarily by heavy rainfall.
Mayor Marc Thorne says the worst
point was between 10 in the morning and noonhour. Thorne describes it as the
worst flooding he has scene in the town in a decade. In Sussex Corner, a state of
emergency was declared and people who got stranded were being rescued by boats.
Doug's Rec Centre was particularly hard hit. You could see expensive trailers
floating in the water and the Ward Creed covered bridge was washed
away. Route
124 into Norton is flooded and another route along Church Street is also
flooded. To reach Norton, you will have to get there through Bloomfield or
through Apohaqui.
A controlled environment at the
information session on the Energy East pipeline last night.
TransCanada personnel in white
shirts easily outnumbering the general public during the last hour of the four
hour event in East Saint John.
David Thompson of the
Conservation Council of New Brunswick tells Tide News a Community Liaison
Committee should be established for this project.
He says it can deal
with any concerns in the Saint John area which will be the terminus of the
pipeline and where the tank farms and ship unloading terminals will
be.
Thompson says everyone involved would be invited to participate in
this committee. He tells us TransCanada seems
open to the idea.
