Officials with Nova Scotia Power said Sunday they expected to have most electricity restored across the province by the end of the day following a nasty winter storm that brought more than 20 hours of freezing rain earlier in the weekend.
Matt Drover, Nova Scotia Power storm lead, said about 120,000 customers lost power during the storm as a result of a thick build-up of ice on trees, power lines and equipment.
He said luckily the slow-moving system, which swept across the Maritimes on Friday and Saturday, didn’t cause any major damage to transmission lines or towers.
“Most of the impact has been from trees,” Drover said.
There were still about 24,000 customers without electricity at midday Sunday.
Drover said the utility has about 600 people on the ground helping to restore power, and he expected most outages would be resolved by Sunday night.
“Our priorities are to always focus on the biggest outage events — the ones affecting the most customers. We are also focused on those that have been out the longest and making sure there are crews in those areas getting power back on as quickly as possible,” he said.
Drover said road conditions and storm debris have slowed crews from getting to affected areas.
“We have been working closely with EMO and Public Works getting the sanding and salting trucks out there in advance of our crews,” he said.
While Nova Scotia experienced heavy rain and freezing rain, parts of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island got close to 50 centimetres of snow.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 6, 2022.