N.B. tourist attraction closes early due to damage from storm Fiona

A popular New Brunswick tourist attraction is ending the season a few days early thanks to damage from post-tropical storm Fiona, which swept through the region over the weekend, leaving a path of destruction in its wake.

The Irving Eco Centre’s La Dune de Bouctouche is a 12-kilometre sand dune along the Northumberland Strait, with a boardwalk of 850 metres.

But on Tuesday, site manager Joanne Jaillet said a large chunk of that boardwalk has now been lost to the sea, and the dune itself has been badly damaged.

The first 100 metres of the boardwalk was destroyed by the storm, she said, as was another 50 metres at the end of the boardwalk. As well, Fiona destroyed a shelter at the 500-metre mark.

Jaillet said so far she’s only been able to survey the first two kilometres of the beach, but she’s already noticed that some places that previously had mounds of sand several feet high are now “almost all flat.”

“We hope that we don’t get another storm for at least another 10 years, so it has to rebuild before the next storm,” she said.

People are asked to stay away from the beach and boardwalk as crews are expected to begin cleanup this week. There is no cost estimate yet for the damage, Jaillet said.

She described the damage as “heartbreaking.”

“It will be closed for the rest of the season, because we don’t have any access to go to either the beach or the boardwalk,” she said.

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She said the season would typically close at the end of September, when tours and interpretive displays come to an end.

The boardwalk and beach themselves are open year-round, she said, but at this point it’s unknown when people will be able to return.

“Only thing I can say is we will start cleaning up, probably Thursday,” Jaillet said. “We ask people not to roam around … we will have people working, trying to get everything out for now.”

It’s not the first time the tourist attraction was badly damaged during a storm.

In 2010, a powerful storm destroyed about 1.2 kilometres of the then-two-kilometre-long boardwalk. It was later rebuilt to be less than half of its original length.