'There could be a few stragglers': Countdown is on to get last 20,000 NB Power customers connected by Christmas

The Christmas spirit may be dwindling in some parts of New Brunswick, with some residents telling CTV Atlantic their homes are so cold they can’t thaw their turkey.

Thursday night will be the fourth for thousands of NB Power customers after a wind and rain stormed knocked out power to over 129,000 customers at its peak.

Youssef Nakhle lives in a neighbourhood in the centre of Fredericton. He is renting a generator which runs his fridge and freezer and is only buying food they can eat in one day.

Their home is cold. his wife, in her eighties, is wearing a jacket and house robe, and patience is wearing thin.

“When I go to bed at night, my bed is frozen,” he said. “I hope we get power today, if not, it will be very…(sigh)”

When asked if there could be some customers who do experience Christmas in the dark, Nicolle Poirier said their goal is for that not to happen.

The vice-president of operations at NB Power said certain customers should prepare just in case. Those customers are the ones listed as a single incident or outage on the website.

“The only ones that could potentially be longer, I would say would be those. The larger incidents, ten above those ones should all be restored. That's our goal. There could be a few stragglers,” she said.

She said teams from Hydro Quebec, Saint John Energy and private contractors are all helping with restorations.

Reporters did have questions on if NB Power was truly prepared for this storm, and if enough resources were on standby.

“So we were prepared with what we felt we needed in order to respond,” Poirer said. “Once the storm hit, we obviously saw winds like we’ve never seen, damage that we weren’t predicting based on what we saw last week. We would have felt we had enough resources while we were preparing for the storm, as soon as we understood the extent of our damage we reached out to our other partners.”

Poirier said all of those other partners or jurisdictions also saw impacts too, which meant they couldn’t come to New Brunswick right away.

“Nova Scotia was significantly impacted, Maine was significantly impacted, so getting additional resources from those areas just wasn’t possible at the beginning,” she said.

The union representing 90 per cent of NB Power workers as well as private contractors believes there wasn’t much more that could have been done to avoid the damage they’re seeing.

He said rushing a job like this could result in injuries or worse.

“Back feed is another potential hazard, especially when homeowners are hooking up generators and may not be doing it correctly or may not have the correct setup. So they have to take extra time to ensure that they are safe from shock or whatnot or electrocution,” said David Brown, IBEW 37 president. “It's going to take the time it's required to do so. There's a lot of operating procedures and standards that the employer has implemented. And at the end of the day, if you put a timeline on it, typically that puts on pressure. You need to do it safely, it takes the time it takes to do it safely.”

The N.B. government wants to know how much this storm cost you

Public Safety Minister Kris Austin says the province is considering tapping into its Disaster Financial Assistance program, but the damage needs to amount to $3 million.

They’re asking that any residents who have experienced damage to register it either online or by phone [phone].

“If your private insurance does not cover it or you do not have private insurance, this is where you would register damages to your property, and then that will give us a better gauge,” Austin said. “We have system checks and balances in place that we will review that information to see if we meet that $3 million threshold as required under the DFA.”

The deadline for property owners, small businesses and not-for-profit organizations to report any damages is March 24.

For more New Brunswick news visit our dedicated provincial page.