Upper Tantallon neighbourhood where wildfire began getting new emergency exit

Haley Ryan · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 26, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 11 minutes ago

Nearly 2 years aft the melodramatic wildfire successful Upper Tantallon, Halifax assembly has approved a caller exigency exit to assistance radical successful the neighbourhood wherever the blaze began.

On Tuesday, Halifax determination assembly approved a 500-metre exigency egress way betwixt the southwest borderline of Westwood Hills and Highway 103.

A unit study said the metropolis volition present commencement acquiring onshore and readying the route, which should unfastened successful 2026.

"I privation similar brainsick I could drawback my fingers and marque it happen. Unfortunately, that's not the mode it works," country Coun. Nancy Hartling told reporters extracurricular the meeting.

Like the 2 exigency exits built instantly aft the fire from the neighbouring Haliburton Hills and Highland Park subdivisions, the way from Westwood Boulevard volition beryllium controlled by a locked gross that the metropolis tin unfastened erstwhile needed.

While Westwood Hills technically has 2 exits, they are precise adjacent to each different connected Hammonds Plains Road, which could pb to bottlenecks and delays.

That deficiency of egress became a immense contented during the May 2023 wildfire, which destroyed 150 homes successful Upper Tantallon and Hammonds Plains. Hundreds of radical were caught successful agelong lines of postulation successful the area, with immoderate radical driving done fume and walls of flame.

The caller way is astatine the southwest country of the neighbourhood, truthful municipal unit said Tuesday they admit that residents astatine the backmost fractional of the subdivision would inactive beryllium vulnerable.

To code that gap, unit volition present consult with residents astir whether to physique different exigency exit, oregon a afloat caller road, betwixt Westwood Hills and Highland Park or Upper Hammonds Plains.

Hartling said that assemblage engagement is cardinal due to the fact that Westwood residents consciousness they person been "left successful the dark" done the process truthful far.

"We conscionable took a large archetypal step. The 2nd measurement inactive needs to happen. And you know, we arsenic a assembly request to beryllium definite that we clasp ourselves accountable present … the different fractional needs to hap successful co-ordination with community," Hartling said.

"Having said that, clip is of the essence, right? Every time is simply a time excessively long."

Some residents person agelong pushed for an egress way disconnected Wright Lake Run astatine the northbound portion of the subdivision. It would transverse Nova Scotia Power lands and usage logging roads done forested areas.

But Mike Connors, manager of proscription planning, told assembly Tuesday that four-kilometre enactment was excessively agelong and unsafe.

"The shorter the egress route, the better," Connors said.

"In the wildfire benignant of concern wherever things are changing and the winds stroke successful antithetic directions, you cognize it's a hazard to nonstop radical done woods similar that."

Council besides directed unit to implicit a survey of subdivisions with egress issues across the municipality this year.

They volition besides make a strategy prioritizing however to hole those problems, and however overmuch it volition cost, portion considering however to leverage infrastructure successful caller projects similar the upwind workplace being built astatine Melvin Lake. The workplace is northbound of Westwood Hills and Upper Hammonds Plains, and volition agelong into Hants County.