Central Maine Power Company (CMP) President Sara Burns stated Sun. the utility has set a goal to complete power restoration from last week’s storm by late Monday evening. She cautioned, however, that forecasts for inclement weather are challenging crews.
A Winter Storm Warning issued by the National Weather Service (NWS) calls for more wind and snowfall to visit Lincoln County beginning Sun. evening and continue into Mon. morning. Total snowfall accumulation for this storm is presently forecast at 6-8 inches, according to the NWS, which also warns of northerly winds gusting to 35 mph.
While the forecast winds for this event are much lower than the Thurs, night storm that whipped through the area, the possibility of heavy, wet snowfall followed by rainfall has emergency management and CMP officials concerned.
“We have set a goal to restore power by late Monday to all the homes and businesses affected by last week’s storm,” CMP President Burns said. “We are concerned about the winter storm forecast to come to the area this evening, which could slow our progress or cause new outages, but we remain committed to our goal.”
State-wide, power has already been restored to more than 100,000 customers since the outages peaked at 133,000 on Friday morning, according to the CMP. However new snow and slippery roads contributed to new outages in many areas. As of midday, fewer than 33,000 homes and businesses state-wide were without power, according to the CMP.
Some 5700 households in Lincoln County were still without power as of mid-day Sun., according to the NWS.
Some of the field work has been challenging, according to CMP spokesperson Gail Rice.
“We’ve had more than 240 broken poles (state-wide) from this storm, far exceeding what we experienced in the winter storm of February 2009 and even the ice storm of December 2008,” she said. “Some of those poles need to be reset in ledge, which requires special equipment. It’s a labor-intensive and time-consuming process.”
CMP continues to bring more utility crews into Maine to reinforce the more than 1,000 people that have been working in the field and in offices on storm repair, according to the CMP.
The Lincoln County News will continue to follow this event and report any additional information here as soon as it becomes available.
