Nearly 27,000 still without power across Maritimes 11 days after Fiona
More than 28,000 customers in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island were still waiting for the lights to come back on Tuesday morning in the wake of post-tropical storm Fiona, which hit the region on Sept. 23.
Canadian Armed Forces personnel arrived in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and P.E.I. last Monday to help clean up debris and get trees off roads so power lines could be restored.
Cleanup efforts are continuing around the clock and power companies are regularly updating their websites.
Nova Scotia
As of 7 a.m. AT on Tuesday, 13,974 Nova Scotia Power customers did not have electricity, according to the Nova Scotia Power outage map. That was down from 415,000 customers at its peak after the storm.
Nova Scotia Power said most of its customers have had electricity restored, but some would still be waiting into later this week.
Lia MacDonald, an emergency operations lead with Nova Scotia Power, said in a release there were more than 1,500 people in the field across the province dealing with broken poles and downed power lines. Hundreds more were working behind the scenes, she said.
"The size of this response effort reflects the magnitude of Fiona and the extent of damage left behind," MacDonald said.
A release from the utility on Monday said repairs are proving to be multi-layed and complex and as a result, many in the province saw their estimated restoration times change Sunday night.
The release said approximately 2,300 customers had their meter masts damaged during the hurricane, four times the number of meter masts damaged during Dorian.
The utility said if a customer's electrical equipment such as a meter mast is damaged, a licensed electrician needs to make repairs before it can work on bringing back power.
It also provided a list of electrical contractors.
As of Monday morning, about 77 per cent of customers in the northeast of the province had their power restored, the release said.
The northeast region has 900 people on the ground, the highest in any region across the province. The northeast region and Cape Breton has power line technicians, forestry technicians, damage assessors, field support and Canadian Armed Forces helping out.
Cape Breton has 500 people on the ground. The release said approximately 93 per cent of customers in Cape Breton had their power restored Monday morning.
As of Monday morning, about 250 customers in the Halifax area were without power, the utility said.
Prince Edward Island
As of 7 a.m. AT on Tuesday, 12,929 Maritime Electric customers were affected by power outages across P.E.I.
Stratford and Charlottetown had the highest number of outages in the province.
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