Persistent power outages post-Fiona plague Cape Breton businesses

The lights were back on Thursday, but Wednesday night, the power - and the supper hour - was lost at Mian’s Restaurant in downtown Sydney.

Immediately following post-tropical storm Fiona, the restaurant lost electricity for more than a week and had to throw out quite a bit of food.

More recently, repeat power outages come at what are already tough times for restaurants dealing with inflation and record-high food costs.

"Three or four times since Fiona that we lost power,” said Aamir Ahmed, one of the restaurant’s owners. "There's a lot of costs associated with it that, as a small business, we cannot afford again and again."

It was a similar story at Revive Salon & Spa just down the road. They lost power for 10 days following Fiona and had to close again late Wednesday afternoon.

"Every day has just become like walking on thin ice,” said owner Mike MacDonald. "As a business owner, we have to show up every day with a smile on our face. It's getting harder and harder to keep putting that smile on when these infrastructures are outside of our control. So when these infrastructures crumble, we pay the price."

In an emailed response to CTV Atlantic, Nova Scotia Power said there were two outages in the Sydney area Wednesday afternoon, affecting roughly 1,600 customers combined.

They said high winds were the issue and that, in some cases, trees and branches were blown onto lines.

NSP added that crews were busy clearing trees from lines Wednesday night and again on Thursday.

Both businesses also lost power Saturday night when a major fire destroyed a nearby law firm.

"It's becoming really hard for us to survive,” Ahmed said.

Back at the salon, they also had no phone or internet for four days following the fire.

"I think some accountability and more transparency,” MacDonald said when asked what he would like to see done. “Levels of government really need to be more proactive in enforcing that infrastructures are maintained properly."

Nova Scotia Power says the downtown Sydney outages were all restored by about 8 p.m. Wednesday.

They added that crews spent Thursday dealing more than a dozen further outages, affecting about 30 customers.