BLOOMFIELD, N.B. — Maritime Electric had close to 5,800 of its P.E.I. customers without power at the peak of Thursday’s wind and rainstorm, Kim Griffin, the utility’s media spokesperson, confirmed Friday.
Griffin said crews had the number of customers without power trimmed to eight by midnight and worked throughout the night restoring power to the remaining customers.
There were three customers without power Friday morning according to the utility’s data, but Griffin pointed out those were newly reported outages.
Griffin said Thursday’s wind and rain event bore very little comparison to the massive impact hurricane Dorian had on the utility’s system nearly six weeks ago. “It was very fast-moving, not the sustained long-lasting wind,” she said.
While there were wind gusts of 100 to 120 kilometers per hour recorded Thursday, Griffin noted it was Dorian’s much extended period of powerful and sustained wind that brought trees down on powerlines right across the province. Some customers following September’s storm were without power for close to a week.
The utility would not have estimates on damages and repair costs from Thursday’s storm until at least next week, Griffin said.
