Nova Scotia Power says an IT problem kept Nova Scotians in the dark about a massive weekend power outage.
Eric Boutilier-Brown was one of nearly 100,000 Nova Scotia Power customers without power after two lightning strikes on Saturday and Sunday.
“We sat in the dark for probably about 20 minutes at least before the power came back on,” he said.
Boutlier-Brown says there wasn’t an outage listing when he went on the Nova Scotia Power website.
“There was one in the valley,” he said, “So we kept on refreshing that, and then we tried Facebook.”
Several people reported being unable to find information about the outage online or by phone.
“We apologize for the inconvenience our costumers experienced,” Nova Scotia Power said in a statement. “We had an IT problem Saturday afternoon that prevented information from getting to our website. We had the issue fixed Saturday evening and systems were all working later that evening.”
Nova Scotia Power customer Thomas Hiltz says he wasn’t able to receive information for over a half hour.
“After a little while the power came back on, but we had no information about it,” he said.
Following post-tropical storm Arthur in July, 2014, the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board asked the power company to review its communications systems. Now it’s asking them to do it again.
Boutilier-Brown says the utility should be able to provide some basic information.
“Either a statement of why they think it’s out of how long they think it will be fixed [by] because there are times I’m sure when they have no clue what’s happened,” he said.
Some are giving the power company the benefit of the doubt.
“If there’s no power and people can’t access the internet, I’m not sure what Nova Scotia Power is expected to do about it,” said customer Peggy MacKinnon.
Nova Scotia Power has not commented on what kind of IT issue occurred. The Utility and Review Board has asked for a full explanation.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Sarah Ritchie.
