HALIFAX—Roofs blew off buildings, a construction crane toppled over and power was cut off to hundreds of thousands of people — all before Dorian had even landed in Nova Scotia.

The powerful post-tropical cyclone was on the threshold between a Category 1 and Category 2 hurricane in the hours leading up to its landfall over the Maritimes, finally changing in structure — though not in intensity — by the time it hit the Chebucto Peninsula around 7 p.m. Saturday.

“We’re still talking about a very dangerous storm that’s transiting through the Maritimes this evening,” Bob Robichaud, a warning preparedness meteorologist with the Canadian Hurricane Centre said at a news conference shortly after Dorian’s arrival.

Following an afternoon of heavy rain and strong winds, there was a temporary calm over Halifax in the early evening, which Robichaud said would not last.

“The storm is definitely not over. We expect the storm to actually track through the province of Nova Scotia through the overnight hours, so we still have a number of hours to go yet with some very, very severe conditions.”

Wind gusts of 150 km/h, rain amounting to between 50 millimetres and 200 mm, and 10-metre-high waves were either already reported in parts of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, or were still in the forecast.

As of Saturday evening, Halifax Regional Police (HRP) said no significant injuries or fatalities had been reported as a result of Dorian, although damage to buildings and power lines was mounting.

HRP spokesperson Insp. Jim Butler told reporters that police had evacuated 150 people from downtown Halifax, including residents of a four-storey apartment building in the south end that lost its roof.

Police had also closed a scene downtown where a crane had swayed briefly in the wind before collapsing into a semi-constructed highrise building.

At a Saturday evening news conference, officials with the city, province and emergency response teams all emphasized the importance of staying indoors until the storm had passed.

“Return home, hunker down,” Peter Andrews, deputy operations chief with Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency, said.

More than 350,000 Nova Scotia Power (NSP) customers were without electricity when Dorian made landfall — about 70 per cent of the utility’s 500,000 clients.

Andrea Anderson, spokesperson for the utility, said crews across the province were on a “safety stand-down” for much of Saturday, meaning they wouldn’t venture outside to investigate outages or repair lines unless lives were at risk. The first repair crews began work in Yarmouth, in southwest Nova Scotia, late Saturday night.

On Friday, Robichaud had told reporters that it’s “tricky” to compare storms, but some of Dorian’s conditions were similar to 2003’s hurricane Juan — a Category 2 storm that downed millions of trees, caused days-long power outages for some Haligonians and took eight lives.

On Saturday, Robichaud again cautioned about Dorian’s potential threat, despite it being reclassified as post-tropical.

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“It doesn’t mean that it’s a weaker storm, not at all … this storm is actually much, much larger than Juan was in 2003. The peak winds might not be as strong, but it’s certainly covering a larger area.”

Halifax Regional Municipality took the rare step on Friday of issuing a voluntary evacuation notice to almost 1,400 homes. The municipality urged people living on Atlantic shorelines, including the Sambro region, Peggy’s Cove and along the Eastern Shore, to move inland.

Ancel Langille of the Canadian Red Cross said on Saturday evening that about 150 people had moved to its three emergency shelters around HRM.

Salil Vishnukapur decided to leave his home in central Halifax as the rain picked up early Saturday morning and arrived at the Red Cross shelter at the Canada Games Centre in the early afternoon.

“I was three kilometres from the waterfront, so I was a little scared,” he said. “I thought it would be more safe to move a little further from the ocean.”

Chris Sisneros and her two sons opted to leave their top-floor Clayton Park apartment for the night, and arrived at the CGC shelter with snacks, clothing, pillows and the boys’ school backpacks.

“In 2018 when we had that really severe rain and wind storm our windows leaked like crazy and I just didn’t want to have us have to all sleep in the one narrow hallway that’s internal,” Sisneros said.

Halifax Transit shut down its fleet at noon Saturday for a minimum of 24 hours.

Many stores and businesses in the city announced they wouldn’t open at all Saturday and others shuttered early. The city recommended that everything close by 5 p.m. to ensure people could get home before the worst of the storm hit in the late evening.

Canada’s public safety minister, Ralph Goodale, took to Twitter Saturday afternoon to say Canadian Armed Forces were mobilizing to help Nova Scotia with recovery from Dorian.

Shannon Kerr, spokesperson with the provincial government, confirmed the province asked for federal assistance with cleanup, as it had done with Juan.

Dorian was forecast to track over the Gulf of St. Lawrence and across parts of Newfoundland and Labrador Sunday.

— With files from Julia-Simone Rutgers/For Star Halifax

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