Christmas Eve power outages leave 33,000 Maritime customers in the dark

More than 88,400 Maritime homes and businesses lost power Friday night, as high winds blow rain and snow throughout the region.

As of 4 p.m. Saturday, over 33,000 remained in the dark.

In New Brunswick, just under 22,000 NB Power customers were without power as of 4 p.m., according to the utility’s outage map.

The map shows the bulk of out the outages are along the province’s border with Maine in the United States.

In Nova Scotia, nearly 10,500 Nova Scotia Power customers were without power as of approximately 4 p.m., the company’s outage map shows.

It appears scattered outages stretch the length of the province.

On P.E.I., nearly 1,300 Maritime Electric customers were without power as of 4 p.m., according to the utility's outage map.

The majority of outages are in Queens and Kings Counties.

PREPARING FOR OUTAGES IN N.S.

Nova Scotia Power (NSP) and the province set up its emergency command centre Friday morning ahead of the storm.

The utility says it has been tracking the storm for days and has crews positioned across the province to respond in case of widespread power outages.

“We brought crews in, contractor crews, along with all of our internal crews,” said Matt Drover, storm lead for NSP.

“They’ve all postponed their holiday plans so they can be ready and they’ve been positioned all across the province to restore power as soon as possible.”

Hurricane Fiona caused damage across the province. At its peak, it knocked out power to more than 405,000 customers.

There’s concern Fiona damaged and weakened trees still standing. NSP says crews have been working in the field to clear the vegetation.

“We’ve had over 100 people out there cutting those trees every day and we’ve actually cut over 4,000 trees since Fiona.”

The storm has already caused some power outages but the worst is expected Friday evening and overnight.

Nova Scotians are being told to avoid unnecessary travel and keep their eyes open for any weather updates.

“Some of the trees are weakened from the last few storms and certainly Fiona and some trees will most likely fall and we’ll have more power outages,” said Jason Mew, Nova Scotia EMO’s incident manager.

“If people can stay off the road, by all means, check the weather and road conditions before leaving your home.”