Fresh meat, dairy items run low on Connaigre Peninsula

Cooke Aquaculture aids with grocery delivery while Atlantic Grocery tackles changing logistics

Diane Mullins managed to find bags of split peas at the local grocery store in Harbour Breton Tuesday morning, Aug. 9, enough to avoid cancellation of Pea Soup Thursday at the café she runs in the town.

However, Mullins and her staff had to resort to baking their own bread to have enough on hand to make grilled cheese sandwiches and other menu items.

After a week-long shutdown of the Bay D’espoir highway because of two major forest fires, supplies are starting to run low.

Clover Farms grocery in St. Alban’s, on the Connaigre Peninsula, ran out of fresh chicken Monday.

“Our shelves are getting empty,” said manager Jennifer Collier. “We’re completely out of milk, eggs and fresh meat.”

Collier told Saltwire Network that people are getting anxious for deliveries of food and other supplies to the area.

“We have only one gas station in this town,” she added, “and right now they’re down to supreme gas only, and they’re limiting sales to emergency vehicles only.”

Rainfall in the area Tuesday helped create a window of opportunity.

In a news conference Tuesday afternoon, Premier Andrew Furey said the Bay D’espoir highway would opened, allowing some supplies to be delivered.

However, the fire grew overnight to cover an area of about 200 square kilometres, and it’s still considered “out of control (and) very active,” he said.

The highway may not be passable for long, he cautioned.

“It’s an hour-by-hour situation,” said Furey.

A provincial government ferry that was being diverted from Lewisporte to the south coast — to run from the Burin Peninsula to the Connaigre to move people and supplies — broke down before it got to Fortune, leaving the government to try to figure out a Plan B.

Meanwhile, private company Cooke Aquaculture has stepped in to help.

The company, which operates a salmon farm in Hermitage, said it would send two vessels and a dozen crew to Fortune early Wednesday morning to pick up groceries and deliver them to the cutoff communities.

“The vessels, Big Dipper and Fortune Princess, will deliver up to 75 pallets of food and supplies to local residents,” the company stated in a news release Tuesday afternoon.

Joel Richardson, Cooke Aquaculture’s vice-president of public relations, said the company is co-ordinating its efforts with the province’s Emergency Operations Centre, Hermitage Mayor Steve Crewe, Harbour Breton Deputy Mayor Roy Drake and MHA Elvis Loveless, with support from other organizations, including the Canadian Red Cross.

In a normal week Atlantic Grocery Distributors in Bay Roberts would send two 50foot tractor trailers of grocery supplies to communities on the Connaigre Peninsula.

John Pritchett, general manager of retail for the company, said it’s been a challenging couple of weeks organizing food deliveries to the area.

“When the highway opened earlier last week, we did manage to get a truck through,” he said.

Then the winds shifted, making it risky to travel on the highway.

Their truck driver had to stay put in Harbour Breton for the better part of the week, and managed to hitch a ride to the Burin Peninsula when a ferry from Bay L’argent was diverted to provide transportation.

With the highway opened again Tuesday, thanks to rain that helped clear the smoke, Atlantic Grocery Distributors sent another transport truck in to deliver goods.

They were also notified on Monday that the province would provide a helicopter to airlift some food freight.

Fresh meats and perishable items, however, can’t be shipped that way.

It meant some extra work for Pritchett and other staff to rearrange the original orders from customers on the Connaigre, pulling off the fresh meats and perishable items and making sure they had critical items packed for the lift.

They arranged for a tractor trailer and driver to meet the helicopter in Winterland and stand by there for the load-go-and-reload operation throughout the day.

“We’re working to get supplies there, whatever way we can,” Pritchett told Saltwire, “by land, sea or air.”

He added the provincial government has been “communicating well” with the company, given that it’s one of the key distributors of groceries on the island.

“Government has been as good as they can be,” he said, noting, “there’s really no way to plan really well for this because the situation can change so quickly, every day.”

Pritchett added if fresh produce — milk, eggs and meat — can’t be transported by truck, the only other option is by sea.

Refrigerated containers are the only way to ship fresh foods, he said, and to do that their only option is to have access to ferries that can handle those containers.

This is not the first emergency situation the company has faced.

Hurricane Igor in 2010 cut off hundreds of communities on the Bonavista and Burin peninsulas, making it impossible to deliver supplies by road for more than a week in some areas.

The COVID-19 pandemic also created challenges, Pritchett said.

“Our team is very missiondriven,” he added. “They know how important it is to get food supplies to people.”

Until the forest fires are under control, he said, Atlantic Grocery Distributors will continue to monitor the situation daily and find ways and means to get supplies to those south coast communities.

“We’ll all get through this together.”