Fewer than 500 Central Maine Power customers were still without power Thursday night after a Sunday snowstorm that knocked out service to 84,000 people statewide.

The company reported at 5:45 p.m. that 470 customers were still without electricity in the state. Power has been restored to every customer in Kennebec, Somerset and Franklin counties.

The midcoast continues to host the bulk of the outages. The remaining outages in Hancock, Knox, Lincoln, Penobscot and Waldo counties affect small customer groups, seasonal homes, islands, hard-to-reach areas and single-customer service cables.

“This is the most difficult and labor-intensive stage of storm recovery,” CMP spokeswoman Gail Rice said. “Each repair brings back fewer and fewer customers. And with many crews working on each circuit, extra care needs to be taken before energizing each line segment to ensure worker safety.”

More than 260 line crews, 100 tree crews and hundreds of additional people are working on storm recovery, Rice said.

Sunday’s storm dumped about a foot of wet, heavy snow across the midcoast and eastern Maine and several inches across interior central Maine, leading to hundreds of car accidents across the state. The snow, coupled with winds that blew in excess of 40 miles per hour, brought down trees, limbs and lines. More than 170 utility poles were broken during the storm, Rice said.

The storm initially knocked out power to more than 80 percent of the homes and businesses in those counties. Statewide outages peaked at 84,000 Monday morning, according to Rice.

“An estimated 166,000 customers across all 14 counties served by the utility lost service at some point during the storm,” Rice said. “We appreciate customers’ patience and understanding as we work through this final stage of storm recovery.”

Craig Crosby — 621-5642

ccrosby@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @CraigCrosby4

Copy the Story Link