Fewer than 500 NS Power customers still off the grid three days after storm

Many Nova Scotia Power customers on the South Shore went more than two days without electricity.

Hundreds of Nova Scotia Power customers were still without electricity following a winter storm that moved through the Maritimes Sunday night into Monday.

The Nor’easter brought 10-to-30 cm of heavy, wet snow to parts of the region.

At the peak of the outages, 140,000 people — or roughly 25 per cent of Nova Scotia Power customers — were in the dark.

As of 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, there were 26 active outages affecting 447 customers.

The largest outage continued to be the Bridgewater area, with 127 customers without electricity.

“We started, like the rest of the province, with massive outages,” said David Mitchell, mayor of Bridgewater. “Our water treatment plant had to run on a generator for over 24 hours. That critical infrastructure can’t be without power for that long so we started with a massive power failure and we’re ending with a lot of questions of why.”

Nova Scotia Power says poor secondary road conditions and the wet heavy snow, which is weighing down trees, are making restoration work difficult for crews.

The utility said Tuesday night that estimated restoration times would be changing for some customers.

“While crews continue to work into the evening, some customers will see their estimated restoration times go into tomorrow. We will be reaching out directly to those customers to communicate any changes in their restoration times,” Nova Scotia Power said in a statement to CTV Atlantic.

The majority of outages will be restored by 11 p.m. Wednesday, according to the utility’s outage map.

-With files from CTV News Atlantic’s Hafsa Arif

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