Ice storm causes power outages
About 7,000 customers lose power in 12-hour period
“People are more reliant on their home devices, and we had people that were working (Thursday) night saying they were trying to do some work. They were worried. We did our best to restore (power) as quickly as we could.’’
Kim Griffin
Maritime Electric crews spent more than 13 hours restoring power to about 7,000 customers between Thursday night and Friday morning.
A mix of snow, freezing rain and rain stuck to trees and power lines causing havoc with power lines across the province.
Kim Griffin, spokeswomen with the utility, said customers started reporting power outages around 7:45 p.m. Thursday in the Hunter River area. About 400 customers were impacted.
“Our crews were saying they were finding ice buildup on the lines. It was quite startling to see the pictures (customers sent us),’’ Griffin said on Friday.
Maritime Electric opened its customer contact centre to field calls at 8 p.m. Thursday and stayed open through the night. Crews were able to restore power to the central region of the province around 11:30 p.m. Thursday, although the contact centre stayed open in case there were additional outages.
Griffin said calls then started coming from customers in eastern P.E.I. around 6:15 a.m. Friday.
“We had a transmission line that went down in the Victoria Cross-Lorne Valley area, which affected about 6,400 customers.’’
Before the utility could reenergize the lines and restore power, it had crews patrolling central and eastern P.E.I. for a couple of hours making sure there were no other issues.
In addition to the transmission line, repairs had to be made at the substation in Lorne Valley before power could be restored.
Due to the power outage in eastern P.E.I., the Montague family of schools was closed for the day. Power was restored to this section of the province around 9:40 a.m. on Friday.
Meanwhile, schools in the rest of the province delayed opening for one hour.
Griffin said based on the calls coming into the contact centre, there was a heightened sense of angst from customers.
“Customers are working from home, and it’s getting colder. They have more challenges and we’re hearing that from customers. The customers calling us (Thursday) night were really nervous the power was going to be out all night. They were quite animated (about it). People are more reliant on their home devices, and we had people that were working (Thursday) night saying they were trying to do some work. They were worried. We did our best to restore (power) as quickly as we could.’’