Cape Breton resident challenges Bell Aliant's Fiona claim

A resident of northern Cape Breton says Bell Aliant's claim that its systems in Nova Scotia were "fully functional" during post-tropical storm Fiona and afterwards is "false information."

Robert Nolan of Ingonish, Victoria County, said in addition to the 911 system being temporarily out of service the day after the storm, the emergency radios that connect police, fire departments and the ambulance service were also down.

He knows, because his sister died of what he called a massive heart attack on the Sunday following the storm and he couldn't get through to anyone.

"I've never felt any more alone than I had that moment," Nolan said. "When you call 911, you expect to have somebody on the way and there was nobody to talk to. There was nobody on the way at that point."

Nolan performed CPR on his sister and called 911 three times, but each call failed.

He sent his wife next door to an RCMP officer's home and down the road to a volunteer firefighter's home, but both told her their trunked mobile radios — the system known as TMR2 run by Bell Aliant — were not working.

Nolan said he later heard the same thing from an ambulance worker and has since been told even if an ambulance had arrived, his sister would not have survived.

But he said his biggest concern is for residents north of Cape Smokey, who should not have been left completely in the dark.

"We had no land lines, no cellphones and no radio communication," Nolan said. "Not a good feeling and I'm just doing this interview just to make sure this never happens again to anybody else."

Nolan said his family wants to know why the emergency radio system went down and wants it fixed for future storms.

"Our main concern right now is what if somebody was clinging to life and help wasn't coming. People could die for no reason. It's just not acceptable."

Last week, in response to criticism of telecommunication companies by Premier Tim Houston, a Bell Aliant spokesperson said 911 and the company's emergency responder network "remained fully functional throughout the storm and aftermath."

Storm damage

This week, the company said a generator at the central office in Ingonish was damaged during the storm.

"We replaced the generator as quickly as possible, but customers in the area were limited to local calls for four to six hours," Bell Aliant's Jacqueline Michelis said in an email.

"When incidents like this occur, fire, [Emergency Health Services] and RCMP have contingency plans (which are not managed by Bell) to allow them to connect with their dispatch centres."

The company did not say why it said the system was fully functional when it knew it had an outage and did not say whether outages occurred elsewhere in the province.

Ingonish Beach Volunteer Fire Department Chief Ervin Barron said he understands Nolan's concerns, but he is not criticizing anyone.

"It's scary not having communications, especially when you're in [Nolan's] situation," Barron said. "But given the circumstances of the storm, Bell did everything they could."

The fire chief said as far as he knows, no one other than Nolan was affected by the outage.

RCMP and EHS, the province's ambulance provider, declined to comment.