Maritime Electric lists P.E.I. communities where power should return this week
More than 95% of individual outages will be repaired by Sunday, says spokesperson
- If your data or internet is limited in the aftermath of post-tropical storm Fiona, click here for the CBC Lite version of the P.E.I. site.
Thousands of Prince Edward Island households and businesses still without power should have their lights back on this week, Kim Griffin of Maritime Electric told a provincial briefing on Monday.
Griffin said crews will focus on getting a number of specific communities or neighbourhoods hooked up this week before they are redeployed to about 10,000 individual customers who were cut off from the transmission lines by high winds and falling trees during post-tropical storm Fiona on Sept. 24.
Later Monday, Maritime Electric posted a complete list of those communities and neighbourhoods, along with how many customers will be reconnected and an estimate of when. For example, Kensington and O'Leary are slated to be reconnected by the end of day Tuesday; Murray Harbour, Murray River, Stanhope and Blooming Point by end of day Friday.
Griffin told the briefing she expects about 98 per cent of all households, depending on special circumstances, to have power restored by Sunday. That includes 95 to 96 per cent of the homes with individual outages.
"These crews are coming your way," she said in a news briefing Monday with Premier Dennis King and other officials looking on. "They are making more more progress every day and we won't stop until all of our customers are restored."
Just because you don't see a crew working in front of your house or on your street doesn't necessarily mean they aren't working on your outage.— Kim Griffin
Griffin said the utility has 216 crews from across the country working to restore power — from as far away as B.C. and Newfoundland, with one additional crew set to arrive Monday night.
"Just because you don't see a crew working in front of your house or on your street doesn't necessarily mean they aren't working on your outage," Griffin said.
On Monday afternoon, the 10th day after post-tropical storm Fiona struck P.E.I., life is in some ways returning to normal — but about 16,000 Maritime Electric customers are still without electricity, meaning no light, heat, hot water, poor internet connections, and for some, no running water either.
With an average of 2.3 Islanders per household, that comes to more than 36,000 people still in the dark.
Eleanor Crossley, who lives on Hutchison Court in Charlottetown, is one of the tens of thousands of Islanders who woke up with the power still off Monday morning.
"It's been very cold," Crossley said. "It's hard with a little one … It's hard to keep a baby warm in a cold house."
Crossley's son is 18 months old. It hasn't been possible to feed him the fresh fruit and vegetables she usually does. With lines still down on the sidewalk on her street, she doesn't even feel it is safe to take him out the front door. She's not comfortable taking the car out either. Fortunately, she does have access to another street out through her backyard.
"I was not expecting it to be this bad. I was expecting three, four days — maybe five — but to be here in the city and to still have a line down," said Crossley.
Crossley's mother got power back Sunday. She said she will probably move in with her until the power comes back on her street.
The province is making efforts to return to normal. Most schools reopened Monday, along with the University of Prince Edward Island and Holland College, and the provincial civil service was called back to work on Thursday.
But for those without electricity, getting ready for work was more of a struggle than usual.
The weather has been mostly mild since Fiona hit the Island on Sept. 24, tearing up trees and devastating the power grid. That has reduced potential problems for Islanders who can't run their furnaces without electricity, but temperatures fell below the freezing point overnight Sunday, and another frost advisory is in effect for Monday night.
During Monday's briefing, Premier King recapped the financial supports that are available to Islanders, and encouraged people to register through Hurricane Fiona Community Supports website.
"We're trying to find the most efficient way to get money out to people as fast as we can," he said. "We're feeling our way through this.... I do know that when you're in the job I'm in, the two things that are always out there is that the money you put out there is never enough and it's never fast but we're just trying to do the best we can."
Two of the support initiatives are being administered by the Canadian Red Cross.
Atlantic director Bill Lawlor said 5,000 of the 14,300 P.E.I. households who have registered for provincial assistance of $250 per household will receive the money electronically today.
There won't be a needs assessment to receive the money, he said, but the Red Cross will go through a verification process to weed out "bad actors" who might try to take advantage of the program.
"We want to make sure that we know that the person who's registered or the head of household is who they say they are and they live where they say they live."
ER short-staffed
Meanwhile, Islanders are being told to expect longer than normal wait times at the emergency department of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown.
Health P.E.I. says staff are feeling the impacts of Fiona, and there is still more absenteeism than normal due to COVID-19. Operating room nurses are being offered double time in some cases to work in the emergency department.
"We're all dealing with the same situation that everybody else in the general public is dealing with," said Mike MacDonald, acting associate director of clinician nursing.
"Some folks have suffered, you know, damage to their houses, property, those kinds of things. And so we're asking staff to come in and work and support Islanders and yet still deal with their own situations at home. So it has been stressful on staff."
People without urgent needs are being told to avoid the emergency department, but MacDonald said the emergency room would not shut down completely despite the staffing issues.
Higher wait times were expected because of Fiona, Dr. Trevor Jain said Monday during his Talk with the Doc segment on CBC News: Compass.
The ER has seen people with carbon monoxide poisoning from generators, "severe lacerations" from chainsaws, and injuries from motor vehicle collisions caused by traffic lights being down, he said.
And he doesn't expect the number of emergency room patients to subside any time soon.
"Mental health is going to be a concern for weeks to come," Jain said.
With files from Gary Moore