Hundreds of NB Power customers are still without power after heavy snowfall Thursday night.
Crews and contractors were scattered around the outlying areas of Fredericton Saturday reconnecting residents.
Homeowner Tony Bettle was stunned the wet snow could leave such a lasting impact.
“It was a shock,” he said. “Five to 10 centimetres was all that was forecast, so when you lose power at all it's a big surprise. But we were 40 hours almost to the minute.”
At the peak of the storm, nearly 30,000 customers had no power. NB Power predicts it will reconnect about 4,500 customers by the end of the day Saturday.
Some customers are going into their third evening without power.
“There still will be (300)-500 remaining without power tonight into tomorrow,” said Meghan Gerrish of NB Power.
Evelyn Peddle operates a convenience store in Burton, N.B. When there is no power, she can't open.
“What scares me (is) this is our first storm; what will happen for the rest of the winter?” she said. “It was totally ridiculous the number of trees hanging over the road. In fact, there were cars running into the trees hanging over the road and it's very dangerous.”
In the aftermath of post-tropical storm Arthur, NB power added about $3 million to its tree-trimming budget, taking it to $8 million.
“They carry on with that work year round, but the bulk of that work does take place in the spring, summer fall months,” said Gerrish. “There's a lot of tree trimming going on over the last couple days trying to remove those large trees from infrastructure so that is what crews are faced with.”
NB Power is also shutting down reports that it sent crews to P.E.I. to reconnect power there.
“There were no NB power crews dispatched to P.E.I. or any other provinces,” said Gerrish. “All the NB Power crews are in New Brunswick and work on this restoration effort.”
NB Power will be contacting customers one-on-one in the days to come.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Nick Moore.
