Some customers could be without power until Monday, says NB Power

About 30,000 NB Power customers were still waiting for the electricity to come back on as of 8:00 p.m. on Sunday following Hurricane Dorian's assault on the Maritimes.

While the hurricane didn't hit New Brunswick directly, people in the province are feeling its effects. NB Power spokesperson Marc Belliveau said most of the outages are because of downed power lines, caused by Saturday's wind. 

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Belliveau said there were 69 crews, 52 contractors and 20 vegetation management crews working to get power back on. 

"There's a lot of work to be done to clear out some areas and get to the poles, get to the wires," said Belliveau.

Belliveau said some people may be without power overnight. They can check NB Power's website for more information on specific outages.

In Saint John, outages started early Saturday afternoon. Saint John Energy president Ray Robinson said there were about 5,000 customers without power at the peak, but that number was down to 200 by mid-day Sunday. 

"Things are coming along," said Robinson. "We expect to have just about all of those back in power by the end of the day."

New Brunswick's Emergency Measures Organization is warning people to stay away from any downed power lines.

"No one under any circumstances should be touching them, or even going near them," said spokesperson Geoffrey Downey. 

"There's probably a lot of damage to trees, both trees that have been downed and limbs that have been broken off and remain in the canopy, so if you're out walking about under trees, have a look up and make sure there's not a large branch that's just teetering."

Downey said to contact NB Power in the event of downed power lines.

Riverview, Moncton, and Dieppe were the hardest hit, with 23,000 without power at one point. In Bouctouche and Shediac, 15,000 were without power. 

"In Moncton, it's a little more complicated because there was so much wind last night in that area that we have to really do assessing today where other areas we were able to get some sense of restoration yesterday."

At one point on Saturday night there were 80,000 customers without power.

On the Acadian Peninsula, in Anse Bleu, people lost power around 7 p.m. on Saturday when the roof of an old garage blew onto the road and hit power lines. Power was reconnected early Sunday morning.

"Big waves, and lots of wind and lots of rain, that's what was going on last night," said Hedard Cormier, who lives in Anse Bleu. "A lot of people were scared, but everything went alright."

Cormier said for him, Saturday's weather was just another storm. Now it's on to the cleanup. 

"We're used to that," said Cormier, "I've seen worse for sure."