Wind cited in power failure affecting thousands in New Brunswick
Thousands of N.B. Power customers were still without electricity Monday afternoon, down substantially from the 46,000 without it earlier in the day.
About 8,200 hadn't still hadn't gotten their power back by 4:30 p.m., according to N.B. Power's online outage list.
The majority of outages during the day were in the central and southwestern parts of New Brunswick, but Madawaska County in the northwest had the most by the end of the afternoon.
N.B. Power spokesperson Dominique Couture said no one from the corporation was available for an interview about why the power failures happened, but confirmed in an email that weather was the cause of some.
"The majority of customers without power in the Fredericton area are currently impacted by an outage in the transmission system," Couture said.
"Crews are currently on site to investigate and restore power safely and efficiently to customers. We are also seeing scattered outages due to high winds and significant rain in certain areas which crews are addressing at this time."
The outages happened as rain and winds of about 75 km/h rolled across New Brunswick on Monday morning.
In Fredericton, the outages affected traffic lights on city streets, however Megan Barker, a spokesperson for the Fredericton Police Force, said officers hadn't been dispatched to any calls for service for traffic collisions.
"Motorists are using caution when driving and applying rules of the road correctly, making stops at intersections where lights aren't functioning," she said, in an email.
N.B. Power customers weren't the only ones affected by outages.
As many as 10,000 Saint John Energy customers lost power Monday, according to the company on social media.
However, crews restored power for all affected customers by about 2:30 p.m.
STU closes for rest of day
In Fredericton, St. Thomas University announced on Twitter at 12:53 p.m. that its campus would remain closed for the rest of the day because it had no power.
STU spokesperson Jeffrey Carleton said there were several hundred students on campus for the first day of the university's spring semester.
With the batteries for the backup lights only lasting about half an hour, he said the school made the decision to send students home.
"It creates unique circumstances when we have classes taking place as we did today, but we understand ... sometimes things are beyond people's control," he said.
Anglophone School District West said on Twitter that its district office and several schools are affected by the outages, but that schools remained open.
