Storm Fiona ripped into eastern Canada on Saturday with hurricane-force winds, forcing evacuations, knocking down trees and powerlines, and reducing many homes on the coast to "just a pile of rubble in the ocean."

The U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said the center of the storm, downgraded to Post-Tropical Cyclone Fiona, was now in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and losing some steam. The NHC canceled hurricane and tropical storm warnings for the region.

Port aux Basques, on the southwest tip of Newfoundland with a population of 4,067, bore the brunt of the storm's rage.

Several homes and an apartment building were dragged out to sea, Rene Roy, editor-in-chief of Wreckhouse Weekly in Port aux Basques, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

Describing many homes as "just a pile of rubble in the ocean right now," Roy said it's the most terrifying thing he has ever seen in his life.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met on Saturday morning with members of a government emergency response team, and later told reporters that the armed forces would be deployed to help with the clean up.

Trudeau had delayed his planned Saturday departure for Japan to attend the funeral of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, but said he now would no longer make the trip. Instead he said he would visit the storm-damaged region as soon as possible.

Fiona made landfall between Canso and Guysborough, Nova Scotia, where the Canadian Hurricane Center said it recorded what may have been the lowest barometric pressure of any storm to hit land in the country's history.

"It did look like it had the potential to break the all-time record in Canada, and it looks like it did," Ian Hubbard, meteorologist for the Canadian Hurricane Center, said. "We're still not out of this yet."

Storms are not uncommon in the region and typically cross over rapidly, but Fiona is expected to impact a very large area.

Hundreds of thousands without power

Some 69 percent of customers, or 360,720 people, were without power in Nova Scotia, and 95 percent, or more than 82,000, lost power on Prince Edward Island, utility companies said. The region was also experiencing spotty mobile phone service.

Mobile and wifi provider Rogers Communications said it was aware of outages caused by Fiona, and that crews would work to restore service "as quickly as possible."

PEI produces more than a fifth of Canada's potatoes and the island's potato farms, which are in harvest season, were likely to be impacted by the storm, Hubbard said.

The storm weakened somewhat as it traveled north. By 5 p.m. Saturday in Halifax it was over the Gulf of St. Lawrence about 130 kilometers northwest of Port aux Basques, carrying maximum sustained winds of 110 kilometers per hour, the NHC said.

(With input from Reuters)