NB Power still plugging away at week-old storm Arthur outages

Written By Unknown on Sabtu, 12 Juli 2014 | 22.40

NB Power is still aiming to have 95 per cent of customers who lost their power during post-tropical storm Arthur last weekend back online by Sunday night.

More than 13,000 homes are businesses were still without power, as of 11:30 a.m. on Saturday.

At the peak of the outages from Arthur, 140,000 customers were affected.

"We're really putting effort on today and tomorrow," said NB Power spokesperson Bob Scott. "We're going to try to get beyond 95 per cent if we can."

On Thursday, NB Power had said it hoped to have power restored to 90 per cent of those customers  — or 126,000 — by Friday night, which would have dropped the number of outages to 14,000.

But by 6:30 a.m. Saturday, nearly 16,000 customers were still offline, according to the utility's website.

Scott says the numbers can be deceiving.

He says it's important for anyone tracking the outages to keep in mind that sometimes power has to be shut off in some areas to facilitate getting it back on for others.

If it appears outages are creeping up again, it's only temporary, he said.

The number of customers still waiting for the return of electrical service stands at 13,471 one week after Arthur's high winds and heavy rain uprooted trees and toppled power lines across the province.

Fredericton remains the hardest hit with 9,083 customers offline.

The bulk of the other outages are in Woodstock, with 1,836, St. Stephen, with 1,581, and Rothesay, with 796.

Outages also continue in Bathurst, Miramichi, Sussex and Tracadie.

Crews are working around the clock to restore power as quickly as possible, Scott said.

NB Power officials have stressed that targeted restoration times are only estimates and can be affected by a variety of factors.

One of the challenges faced in recent days, for example, was that storm-weakened trees continued to fall on lines and infrastructure, causing thousands more to lose power.

But the utility provides conservative estimates to help people to make plans in the interim, officials have said.

NB Power hopes to have 99 per cent reconnected by Tuesday, said Scott.

The final one per cent — mostly seasonal properties and those with structural damages or significant damage to utility infrastructure — will take longer, officials have said.

'We've got the crews working today, tomorrow, and they'll be working until the very last customer is hooked up.'- Bob Scott, NB Power

"People have to understand that we're working very hard," said Scott. "Now into the tougher ones, where the trees have come down on the lines, the lines are tangled in the trees, it takes more time to get at them," he said.

"But we've got the crews working today, tomorrow, and they'll be working until the very last customer is hooked up."

More than 300 crews are working to restore power as soon as possible, including foresters from the private sector.

"Restoration work is being done with a strategic, priority-based approach," the Department of Public Safety said in a statement on Friday.

"The priorities are health and safety, telecommunications, securing food, fuel and cash distribution, and getting industry back to work."


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