Darknesss, anxiety and depression: Islanders in the dark 2 weeks after Fiona

It's been two weeks since post-tropical storm Fiona hit Prince Edward Island knocking out power to the entire province — and over 9,000 Maritime Electric Customers are still in the dark.

"Getting depressing, lugging generators and gas," said Stephen McKenna who lives in a trailer park in Clyde River.

"I have a heart condition, slight heart condition, and I'm buying gas every day. The price of gas is getting unaffordable."

Gas prices went up twice this week, with regular gasoline now ranging from $1.76 to $1.77 per litre at the pump.

A couple of days into the outage, McKenna was able to get some water because the house at the top of the park had power and water is pumped to the park from its well, he said.

But he hasn't been taking hot showers.

"Don't have enough power in the generator, well I could do it with a kettle, but it's more of a sponge bath all the time. I took a shower the other day but it's something cold," he said.

In many cases those without power don't have access to heat or hot water and are watching lights come on around them, but not their own.

"The road that you come into the park, a week ago last night, and most of the other roads went on that night," McKenna said. 

"I can look out every window of my house and see lights. Every direction. But not in here."

He is using his generator to keep essentials going in his home such as the fridge, freezer and microwave.

"I lived here since '90 — the most we were ever out was four days."

Other people living in the trailer park are in the same situation. Kristina Grugios has also been without power since the storm hit.

"I'm anxious to get power back," she said.

"For the first week I didn't have anything. I didn't have a generator, I didn't have any source of heat, or anything. Everything got lost in the fridge, all of our food is gone."

Grugios said about a week into having no power someone let her borrow a generator.

"My mom gave me a cooking pan thing I can use outside because I was using my barbecue, but then the barbecue propane ran out."

The person she rents her mobile home from has a vacant unit at the top of the road and has been allowing Grugios and others in the park to use the space for hot showers, she said.

"I actually just came back from having a shower."

Grugios believes Maritime Electric and other crews working to clean debris and get power back on are doing the best they can. 

"People need to be patient," she said. "I will be thankful when my power comes on."

Some people in Charlottetown are also still waiting for their power to be restored.

Kylee Graham lives in the city and lost power at 1 a.m. the night of the storm and it's been out ever since.

"We had a massive tree that fell right here in the driveway, right across it, ripping the power out of our house," she said. "We couldn't get out of our driveway for two and half days."

Two weeks without power has impacted her daily routine.

"It's basically waking up and trying to find coffee, coffee is a big thing," she said.

Mental toll

Like others dealing with anxiety and depression related to the power being out so long, Graham is feeling a toll on her mental health.

"This is the first day that I did my, like, makeup just to feel a bit better about the situation, because ... it just weighs on you," she said.

"It makes everything like 10 times harder and 10 times longer to do any like basic thing," she said, adding it's tough to go to work and come home to a little "basic comfort" because the power is still out.

"It weighs on you to sit in your dark cold apartment for two weeks straight, just not being able to have any food in your fridge."

The neighborhood Graham lives in was hit hard by the storm, but she said she never thought she would be without power for a full two weeks.

She's using a barbecue to cook, but said it's getting hard to find propane and she has been going to her partner's workplace to shower. She feels the province and Maritime Electric could have done more to prepare for the storm.