Nearly 200,000 Nova Scotia Power customers woke up Saturday morning with no electricity after a powerful storm hit the province Friday night.
By Sunday morning, power had been restored to nearly 180,000 customers. As of 11 a.m., 834 active outages remain.
Outages are impacting nearly every inch of the province after high winds tormented the region. Environment Canada says peak gusts of 119 km/h were recorded in HRM at Halifax Stanfield International Airport. Hurricane winds of over 120 km/h were recorded in Cape Breton, according to Nova Scotia Power.
“Our crews have been working through some challenging conditions with high wind bringing trees and branches into power lines, broken poles and at times, poor visibility,” Pam Scully-Poirier, Nova Scotia Power’s Storm Lead, said in a press release. “We have more than 600 people in the field and hundreds more behind-the-scenes working to restore power safely and as quickly as possible.”
Estimated restoration time varies by location. Nova Scotia Power said many of the remaining outages are affecting a small number of customers or a single customer each.
“Each repair is complex and often requires more time to restore,” a notice on its website said. Most customers are expected to have power restored between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m.
“We want our customers to know we are doing everything we can to get their power back on,” Scully Poirier said. “Along with our crews in the field, we’ll also be using a helicopter to patrol power lines in different parts of the province today to look for damage.”
While the worst of the storm may be over, it is still a windy day. According to Environment Canada, southwest winds gusting up to 60 km/h will calm to 20 to 40 km/h by Sunday afternoon in HRM. Parts of Cape Breton could experience wind gusts of up to 60 km/h into the afternoon.
Nova Scotia Power announced ahead of the storm that it was opening its emergency operations centre to coordinate its response.
The municipality’s Emergency Coordination Centre was also activated as of 8 pm Friday, also to support coordination and response efforts.
