Thousands of Mainers are still in the dark on Sunday after Post-Tropical Cyclone Lee took down trees and power lines across the state on Saturday.
Midcoast and Down East Maine took the brunt of the damage.
As of Sunday morning, Central Maine Power is reporting over 23,000 outages. That’s way down from the peak of 126,000 customers impacted by the storm, according to CMP.
Versant Power is reporting nearly 18,000 customers are without power as of Sunday morning.
CMP says more than 500 power line crews and 300 vegetation management crews will continue to work around the clock assessing damage and then making repairs until all customers are safely restored.
Some repairs may be swift with only a small portion of the lines impacted; others may require multiple new utility poles to be installed. After line crews are assigned to damaged areas, estimated restoration times will be provided, according to CMP.
“As we’ve been restoring power in southern Maine, we’re collapsing crews to the harder hit areas from Brunswick up to Belfast to get those customers back online quickly,” Jon Breed of Central Maine Power said.
For those still in the dark, both CMP and Versant are expecting to have power restored to the whole state by Monday or Tuesday.
In the days ahead, officials with Maine’s Emergency Management Agency will begin working with the hardest hit areas and calculating the damages.
Remember, if you come across any downed lines from the storm, steer clear.
“The last thing we want during one of these storms is to see someone lose their life trying to clear the way for traffic or trying to get out of their driveway,” Judy Long of Versant Power said.
