Crews restore majority of outages in Maine caused by Hurricane Lee
Hurricane Lee churned along the coast of Maine on Saturday, causing widespread power outages, particularly in coastal areas. But by Monday morning, Maine’s two major electric companies, Central Maine Power (CMP) and Versant Power, had restored power to most households in their service territories.
The storm, which was downgraded from a hurricane before making landfall in Nova Scotia, Canada on Saturday afternoon at 4:10 p.m., still brought high winds and rain to Maine. Perry in Washington County had 83 miles per hour winds, while winds reached 62 mph in Eastport, 49 mph in Augusta, 56 mph in Bangor, 44 mph in Portland, and 48 mph in Brunswick.
CMP officials said that as many as 126,000 of its customers had been without power on Saturday evening. Some 84,000 had been restored by Saturday night. CMP crews were out all day on Sunday with the expectation that the vast majority of the outages would be restored by the end of the day Sunday. CMP is seeking to bring power back to as many businesses, schools, and other key locations as possible so that residents can get back to their normal, daily lives on Monday morning.
“In this day and age, we know how important electricity is to Maine’s homes, businesses, and communities, and we are doing everything we can to restore power as quickly and as safely as possible,” Jon Breed, spokesperson for CMP, said. “We are so grateful for all the support our customers and communities have shown our teams over the past several days.”
CMP officials said the vast majority of outages were caused by fallen branches and trees. In addition to its internal crews, Avangrid, CMP’s parent company, brought in crews from out of state to help with the restoration efforts. Overall, more than 500 power line crews and 300 vegetation management crews worked around the clock assessing damage and making repairs. Only a small portion of the power lines were impacted.
Versant posted an update on Monday morning, saying 90 percent of the outages caused by the storm had been restored. As of Monday morning at 11:00 a.m. ET, only about 1,600 customers in its service territory were without power.
At the peak, there had been as many as 36,000 Versant customers without power on Saturday afternoon. Officials said internal crews, contract crews, and tree crews will be out working on Monday to work on restoring the remaining outages. Most of the outages remain in the Bar Harbor, Ellsworth, and Bangor areas.
“We estimate that at least 95 percent of customers will be restored by the end of the day Monday, with remaining customers restored on Tuesday,” Versant officials said.
Versant has also increased staffing for this effort, with more than 100 line crews, as well as additional tree crews on hand to help with storm restoration.
