Crews still working to restore power to over 1,100 N.B. Power customers
CBC News | Posted: December 26, 2022 8:19 PM | Last Updated: December 26, 2022
Outages concentrated in Carleton, Victoria and Madawaska counties
N.B. Power crews are still working to restore power to more than 1,100 customers, following a storm that swept through the province on Friday night.
Just over 1,150 customers still had no electricity as of 3:30 p.m. Monday as a result of a storm that brought heavy wind and rain to the province on Friday.
Most of the 170 outages were concentrated in Carleton, Victoria and Madawaska counties, according to N.B. Power's online outage map.
Marc Belliveau, a spokesperson for the utility, said many of those outages were expected to be reconnected by about 11 p.m. on Monday, however some customers could still be without electricity on Tuesday.
"It's very difficult to say [when electricity will be restored] until we get into certain areas and start our work," Belliveau said.
"We always encourage people to go to our website and check the estimated times of restoration because they can change during the day depending on the complexity of repairs."
Belliveau said Friday's storm appears to be have been one of the worst N.B. Power has had to respond to in the past 25 years.
Whereas some recent storms like post-tropical storm Arthur caused damage in specific areas, Belliveau said Friday's storm impacted the entire province, resulting in more individual outages over a large area.
"One [outage] might be one or two houses, but it still needs somebody to fix those wires or fix a broken pole or take branches off, so it's a very labour-intensive endeavour."
Belliveau said 71,000 customers were left without power at the peak of the outages.
That prompted N.B. Power to deploy about 500 crew members to respond across the province, he said.
"By far the majority of the outages were caused by branches bringing down lines or making contact with lines and so on, but there was also dozens of poles that were broken around the province."