Hotel owner prepares for Lee and fall hurricane season

For this hurricane season and with Lee approaching, Charlottetown businesses are preparing better than last year.

By Val Mandujano, Sept. 13, 2023

Rod Santa María hurried to the hotel while carrying two big jugs of warm water for his guests.  

Every morning at 5 a.m., he ran two blocks away to get two full thermoses to give his guests hot coffee. 

    Fiona had just hit in the fall of 2022.  

The General Manager of the Harbour House downtown, Rod Santa Maria, prepares for Hurricane Lee. He hopes the storm doesn’t hit as hard as Fiona did last year. VALERIA MANDUJANO PHOTO. 

    The Harbour House was without electricity and two trees fell, blocking the streets around the building to cars and people on foot.

    Santa María grabbed the small generator he found and used it to give a bit of power to the place for the guests to toast bread or charge devices. 

    “You can charge your phones now,” he told the guests. 

Santa María, the General Manager of the Harbour House, and his wife Cari Santa María, remember those days after the hurricane and wished they would have known how to better prepare for a situation like that.  

    “There was not much time to process what we were experiencing,” he said. 

    Eleven days was the longest time the hotel had been without power in its 25 years of operation. Water, food, lanterns and emergency items they had prepared for Fiona only lasted three days, as directed by the province. 

    “We spent 11 days operating at a very low capacity, with about six or seven rooms with guests but without electricity, without hot water for showers, without being able to serve breakfast, nothing.” 

    Because of the experience and the financial impact, Santa María decided to get a generator for the whole building to ensure guests don’t experience the same thing this year.  

    “We decided to buy a giant generator, a tremendous machine, for $30,000.” he said. “For the service we are going to give – this season -, we should be a 100 percent prepared, the generator can administer power to the entire building.” 

    For this weekend, because of Hurricane Lee, Harbour House has already received some cancellations, but Santa María knows there’s not too much you can do but provide a better service than last year, despite the predicted weather conditions. 

Schools preparing too

    It's not only downtown businesses that are getting ready for Lee. Holland College has a new action plan for upcoming storms.  

    The college will provide shelter-in-place if a storm happens while students are on campus, providing food and water. In case of a severe weather hazard the college’s Core Crisis team will provide additional guidance to students about what to do.  

 Holland College also prepares for this storm season with new action plans in case Lee hits hard. Jonathan Barret, manager of Campus Projects, encourages students to get ready for whatever could happen. VALERIA MANDUJANO PHOTO 

    “As a college we are looking to improve the things we didn’t last year. We had wind straps strapped down to make sure some things won’t fly away,” said Jonathan Barrett, the manager of Campus Projects. He is in charge of closing the campus when huge storms are coming.  

    For Fiona, nobody was prepared for two or more weeks, but this year will be different, said Barett.  

    “People are terrified. They are trying to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen again,” said Barrett. 

    Barrett says students should find a basic-needs checklists for hurricanes at Red Cross Canada and the federal Government websites. 

    Meanwhile Santa Maria says this fall he is prepared. 

    “I don't think we will have an experience like Fiona again, not only because there are no longer any trees on the street that can fall, but because Fiona is one of those storms that you experience once in a lifetime, I hope.”