Repairs continue as tens of thousands of Nova Scotians remain without power

By Meghan Groff

Tens of thousands of Nova Scotians remain without power early Monday afternoon after Fiona made landfall near Canso early Saturday.

Nova Scotia Power says about 415,000 customers — 210,000 in Halifax and surrounding areas — lost power during the historic storm.

As of 2 p.m. Monday, just under 180,000 customers in the province are without electricity, including over 23,000 in Dartmouth, 13,000 in Halifax, 10,000 in Sackville, 2,800 in St. Margarets Bay and 600 in Sheet Harbour.

The utility's storm lead Matt Drover said progress is being made but there's still a lot of difficult work ahead for the 1,000 people on the ground working on restorations.

“We've brought in hundreds of additional crews all the way from Ontario, Quebec, all of Atlantic Canada, the New England states as well,” he told a media briefing Monday afternoon, adding more are on the way.

Drover said that makes this the biggest mobilization in the company's history.

The main focus right now is fixing the outages that are affecting the most people.

“Once those are restored they move on to the smaller outages, then the individual customers from there,” he explained, “but the damage is extensive.”

“Yesterday was a big day of getting out and scoping that, getting helicopters in the air, we had drones doing that assessment,” he added. “Today is getting crews in the field, rebuilding those lines getting those polls up in the air, the wire strung and getting the power back on.”

Nova Scotia Power says 300 people are working in the Halifax area, including power line technicians, forestry technicians and damage assessors. By 8 a.m. Monday, service had been restored to 80 per cent of customers in HRM and some surrounding communities.

However staff were sidelined for a while this morning during the lightning storm.

Members of the Canadian Armed Forces are being deployed to help. Rear-Admiral Brian Santarpia, the Commander of the Maritime Forces Atlantic and Joint Task Force Atlantic, said they are busy clearing debris so power crews can reach trouble spots.

Nova Scotians are being encouraged to check out Nova Scotia Power's outage map for the latest on when power will return.

“As soon as crews get on site and they understand the extent of damage in place, they will be updating those estimated restoration times,” Drover stated.

If you see a downed line or and wire, treat it as if it's energized. Stay away and report it by calling 1-877-428-6004.

There are a number of comfort stations open in HRM, offering people food and water, and a place to recharge devices.

The Canada Games Centre remains open to residents impacted by structural damage to their homes. 

Lingering outages meant no classes for public school students. A lot of post-secondary students also have the day off and there are still many other closures and cancellations.

Halifax Regional Police continue to ask drivers to stay off the roads if possible, as there are still downed power lines, trees and debris on streets.

The municipality has also set up eight debris drop-off locations. Trees located on private property are the sole responsibility of the homeowner. The municipality is not responsible for removing brush and debris from private property.

And as of Tuesday, the acceptable amount of branch bundles associated with organics collection has doubled, so residents may set out 10 branch bundles on their organics collection day. 

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