NB Powers crews at work. (NB Power)
NB Power says dozens of crews are on the ground working to restore power following Thursday’s nor’easter.
The utility’s website lists more than 50 outages affecting more than 1,100 customers as of 5 p.m. Friday.
Marc Belliveau, a spokesperson for NB Power, said most of the outages were caused by trees making contact with power lines.
Environment Canada said the Saint John area reported a peak wind gust of 82 kilometres per hour on Thursday.
“There’s a lot of trees that are still holding their leaves, so with that much wind, those branches are flying around really well and making contact with our wires,” said Belliveau.
“In the St. Stephen area, we had eight poles that had conductors on the top of them broke off from tree contact near Oak Bay.”
We appreciate the patience of our Customers in Charlotte Southwest. We have 42 crews in the area. Please refer to our outage page for estimated times of restorations. #NBstorm
— NB Power (@NB_Power) October 18, 2019
Most of the remaining outages are in Charlotte Southwest, which took the brunt of Thursday’s storm.
Belliveau said they hope to reconnect most, if not all, customers by the end of the day Friday, but adds it will depend on what sort of damage crews uncover.
“In some areas, you might be able to cut some trees, cut some branches and rewire an area and get hundreds of people back online, but in other areas, it might be one or two customers but it still requires the exact same kind of effort,” he said.
Belliveau said about 19,000 homes and businesses were without power at the peak of the outages.
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