UNHAPPY HOLIDAYS
No power over Christmas for some Cape Bretoners.
Kevin Marchand was on his fourth generator since power went out on Christmas Day.
“I thought I was doing the right thing when I had one of those propane generators installed,” said Marchand.
“But that broke. So I borrowed a generator from my brother-in-law but that broke.”
On Thursday Marchand had two more borrowed generators – one keeping the freezer and fridge running at his Robbins Road, Isle Madame, home and another keeping the pipes from freezing at the cottages he rents further up the road.
His wife and three children had been staying with family since Boxing Day as they waited for the power to come back on.
“These things happen,” said Marchand.
“I just feel lucky I’m not one of the guys out working on the poles.”
A Nova Scotia Power pole truck crew and two woods crews were cleaning up fallen trees and fixing the line where it ran through a copse of trees on its way to the exposed point in the Strait of Canso where Marchand lives.
By noon on Thursday the 450 front line personnel had restored power to 99.9 per cent of the 158,000 residences and businesses that lost electricity at some point during the Christmas Day storm that brought snow, freezing rain and wind gusts of up to 110 kilometres per hour.
“The biggest restoration challenge for crews is the amount of damage and the number of damage sites – many of which are quite isolated,” said Tiffany Chase, spokeswoman for Nova Scotia Power, on Thursday.
“We are encountering multiple trees on multiple spans of line and a large number of broken poles, each of which requires a number of repairs before power can be safely restored.”
The 200 remaining customers, mainly in isolated places like Robbins Road, were just going to have to wait a bit longer to get power restored.
“That’s fine,” said Marchand who had been told he might get his power back by 7 p.m. on Thursday.
“What’s one more night out of the house?”