CMP, Versant Crews Going to Canada to Restore Power after Fiona

Central Maine Power and Versant are providing mutual aid to Canadian power crews who are working to restore electricity after Hurricane Fiona.

How Many Nova Scotia Residents Are Without Power?

It was a devastating storm for Atlantic Canada, leaving the majority of residents without power, and even sweeping some Nova Scotia homes out to sea. Despite being termed an extratropical cyclone before making landfall, the storm packed the wallop of a hurricane, taking down multiple trees, which left most of the area in the dark. As of Monday morning, Nova Scotia Power was reporting more than 192,000 customers without electricity. A release posted on the company's website reports there were more than 400,000 without power on Saturday across Nova Scotia.

How Many Crews from Maine are Headed North?

Central Maine Power and Versant are offering mutual aid to a country that has helped us during times of large-scale outages. From CMP, 16 two-person crews, as well as 10 additional support personnel, 14 bucket trucks, and two digger trucks have headed north. CMP President Joe Purington said, in a media release sent out over the weekend, that Maine utilities understand the challenges these types of power outages can cause for workers and their customers.

This was an historic storm that battered Canada's Atlantic Coast. I believe it's important for utility companies to help their neighbors in times of crisis.

Judy Long with Versant Power tells us that some of their crews will also be heading north to help with storm recovery. She says the plan is to send a supervisor, 15 line workers, and 2 mechanics to Nova Scotia.

There is a solid history of utilities helping each other out when we see historic storms, and we hope we can lend a hand to our neighbors.

Recovery from this type of storm is often slowed by the need to remove downed trees and replace broken utility poles. The mutual aid will help local crews to restore power much faster than they would be able to do on their own.

Has Power Been Restored to All of Maine?

Both companies specified that the decisions to send those crews were not made until power was fully restored to all Maine customers after the high winds brought to the state by Hurricane Fiona.