NB Power continues restoration efforts after extreme high winds

Crews restored power to thousands of customers across the Maritimes.

The sound of humming generators could be heard up and down Reeder Street in Salisbury, N.B., Monday.

Residents lost power around 3:45 p.m. on Sunday when high winds caused a large tree to crash into power lines.

“It’s been a bit of an inconvenience,” said Justin Smith, who lives near the bottom of the street.

Sunday’s high winds lasted all day and caused up to 58,000 power outages provincewide.

Roughly 33,500 customers were without power around 7:40 p.m., the peak of the outages during the weather event.

Smith said he understands these things happen and he doesn’t mind the power going out, but he would like to get a little more information from NB Power about when it might be restored.

“We’ve been kind of in the dark,” said Smith. “Their website, it just says between 10 and 11 [o’clock] for everybody that is without power. I don’t really find that helpful and if you try to call in the wait times are ridiculous.”

Down the street Darren Horsman took a half day off work to keep an eye on things at home.

“This length of time, enough. Shorter outages isn’t as bad, but you start getting into these long hours it kind of gets to you,” said Horsman.

NB Power Vice-President of Operations Nicole Poirier said the number of outages was not unexpected given the strength of the wind.

Bathurst had the highest recorded peak gusts on Sunday at 107 km/hr.

Gusts in Moncton, Saint John and Fredericton reached over 80 km/hr.

Poirier said restoration crews were doing a good job all day long and as of late afternoon Monday the number of outages was below 2,300.

“I would say we expect to have power restored to the majority of those customers today, by the end of the day,” said Poirier. “However, we do foresee some customers having their power restored into tomorrow, into Tuesday morning.”

Poirier said it’s always difficult to be without power under any circumstances and she appreciates the frustration.

“When we have such a large event like this we do prioritize based on certain criteria. First and foremost, we look at our transmission lines, those that have a significant number of customers that are being impacted. Our priority goes there as well to critical infrastructure like hospitals,” said Poirier.

There is a method to restoration efforts and NB Power follows it pretty consistently after any weather event, she said.

A message on NB Power’s social media platforms Monday morning said around 500 people were supporting restoration efforts. More crews were at work Monday than usual.

“We would have called people in when we knew the event was happening on Friday,” said Poirier. “We would have ensured that our internal crews were ready. We secured our contractors as well.”

According to one of the residents on Reeder Street, power was restored by 2:45 p.m. Monday.

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