Over 100,000 Nova Scotia Power customers woke up Saturday morning with no electricity after a powerful storm hit the province Friday night
As of 8:30 a.m. Nova Scotia Power said approximately 186,000 customers had lost power, with power being restored to about 90,000 already this morning.
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. For most of HRM, power is expected to be restored by 5 p.m., but that could be as late as 10 p.m. for other areas across the province.
“We want our customers to know we are doing everything we can to get their power back on,” ScullyPoirier 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 70 km/h will calm to 30 to 50 km/h by the afternoon in HRM. Parts of Cape Breton could experience wind gusts of up to 80 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.
Crews work to restore power across the province. Photo courtesy of Nova Scotia Power.