(Updated at 12:51 a.m. Saturday) While hardworking crews from Central Maine Power Co. have been able to restore electricity to over 6,600 Lincoln County households, another 900 may have to spend Friday night in the dark, according to CMP.
By 12:24 a.m. Saturday, power had been restored to 6,643 Lincoln County households, with 951 remaining without power, according to CMP. The number of power restorations continued to climb during the nighttime hours.
Outages peaked at 7,594 at 6:44 a.m. Friday.
Calmer weather on Friday allowed CMP crews to operate in good working conditions, however, CMP spokesperson Gail Rice said efforts to restore power to all households may not be possible until Saturday. The hardest-hit areas of Maine, possibly including rural areas of Lincoln County, may have to wait several days for power restoration, according to a CMP statement released on Friday afternoon.
CMP had brought in an additional 200 line and tree crews from contractors before the storm reached Maine, and the company continued to bring in additional resources throughout the day from utilities and contractors throughout the Northeast and Canada, according to the statement.
A team of more than 1,200 field and support personnel are engaged in the restoration during the New Year’s holiday weekend, according to CMP’s estimate. The field effort includes roughly 100 CMP line crews assisted by nearly 190 contract crews for line repair and 130 tree crews from the Canadian provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick, as well as from Maine, Connecticut, and New York.
These crews will continue efforts to repair wires and poles damaged by wind, rain, and snow that pummeled Lincoln County during the overnight hours of Thursday into early Friday morning.
CMP encourages motorists to allow their crews ample room to work, and to slow down as they approach a CMP crew.
Lincoln County emergency services responded to numerous traffic incidents, fallen trees and tree limbs, and wires down beginning in the early evening hours and continuing overnight, according to Tod Hartung, director of the Lincoln County Emergency Management Agency.
Power loss was widespread as of the 11:25 a.m. CMP bulletin on Friday, with outages reported in every Lincoln County town. Hardest hit at the time were Jefferson with 1,248, Damariscotta with 1,135, and Nobleboro with 984.
Statewide, outages were reported in 14 of the 16 counties in Maine, with 75,397 outages reported in the state as of the 12:53 p.m. CMP bulletin on Friday.
Along with high winds and heavy rainfall, the storm coated Lincoln County with several inches of accumulated snowfall in varying amounts, with higher snowfall totals inland, according to estimates from the National Weather Service and other sources.
For a look at CMP restoration efforts, check online at http://www.cmpco.com/Outages/default.html.
