Central Maine Power Co. says it has restored power to most of the customers who lost power Friday night because of high winds and downed tree branches.
CMP reported Friday night that more than 22,000 of its 675,510 customers had lost electrical service. By 8:45 p.m. Saturday, roughly 80 customers still remained in the dark, 60 of whom were in Oxford County.
Meanwhile, Versant Power reported 760 of its 167,081 customers were without electrical service.
Outages started racking up as rain moved out of the region and windy conditions picked up after sundown Friday, CMP spokesman Jonathan Breed said.
“We’re seeing wind gusts up to 50 mph in some areas,” Breed said. “We had double coverage anticipating outages going into tonight, and we’ve got crews out now restoring service.”
Source: Central Maine Power
Breed said Friday that crews would work through the night into Saturday.
The fresh set of outages came on the heels of last weekend’s devastating ice storm, which plunged nearly 200,000 CMP customers into darkness on March 23 and took several days to restore.
The early spring storm dumped up to 2 feet of snow in some parts of the state, while a mix of rain, freezing rain and sleet blanketed coastal areas in a layer of ice, bringing down trees, limbs and power lines while closing dozens of roads across southern Maine.
CMP outages peaked at 198,745 on March 24. Cumberland County was hit particularly hard, with nearly half of the more than 177,000 customers without power. More than 46,000 customers in York County lost power.
The utility deployed a total of 902 crews, including 478 bucket trucks, 91 digger trucks that dig holes to install power poles, and 333 “vegetation management crews” that chop up trees blocking roads.
Communities hit hardest by outages opened warming shelters where people could stop in to warm up and charge electronics.
Staff writer Emily Allen contributed to this report.
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