Almost 13,000 people in Moncton and Riverview woke up without power Saturday morning, but officials say the outage wasn’t weather related.
Ed Allain says he usually wouldn’t bother shoveling the dusting of snow in his driveway, but when he woke up without power he needed to find something do.
“The power’s been out all morning so I figured this would be something to occupy my time for the rest of the morning,” Allain says.
He woke up at 5 a.m., and the power had already been out for almost two hours.
With stable weather and mild temperatures in the area, Allain says the outage caught him off guard.
“There’s no storms on the go, the weather has settled down,” he says. “It was just an ordinary night, very surprised actually.”
At its peak, New Brunswick Power had 3,000 customers in Moncton and 8,600 in Riverview without power.
In a statement, N.B. Power said the power outage was due to an equipment problem in a remote location that is not easily accessible.
Members of the Wilson family are N.B. power customers so they spent the day warm inside with the help of a generator. They say their home has become a sort of warming centre for the whole family.
“We brought the electric fireplace from downstairs, upstairs and plugged it into the generator,” says Wilson. “Just having that going along, some blankets… trying to keep warm.”
Deputy Chief for the Riverview Fire Department, Mitch Short says firefighters kept busy throughout the day chasing false alarms.
“Some buildings that have battery back-up on their alarm systems, as the power is dying in the battery it sets off a trouble alarm…so this is the second one we've responded to today,” Short says.
Short also says small crews are sent to each call and can quickly determine if it's serious and they will continue to do so until the power is restore.
N.B. Power says its hoping to have everyone back on the grid by the early evening Saturday.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Jonathan MacInnis.
