CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. - It took five days for Maritime Electric to restore power to the entire province after one of the worst storms in decades.
Kim Griffin, spokeswoman for the utility, said it may not have felt to some people like it was that bad, but it was.
“The fundamental difference with this storm is that every Islander was affected,’’ Griffin said late Monday afternoon, “every single one of our customers. It has been decades (since that happened) . . . . It was something that went all across Prince Edward Island (where) it stayed windy and strong and aggressive all day.’’
There have certainly been storms in the past that have packed plenty of impact. White Juan in 2004 and the ice storm in 2008 come to mind. The ice storm, however, was isolated to certain pockets of the province whereas this storm hit west, central and east, and the winds were sustained through the day on Thursday.
“Just so people understand, we have a storm budget and we have insurance. We have a storm budget that we allocate for and at this point, because I don’t have the final cost, it’s hard for me to comment outside of that, but we budget for storms. While we prepare for outages every day, that’s part of our job, we also have something in the budget that looks at storms.’’
-Kim Griffin
Another difference with this storm is that it took longer to assess the damage. As the day passed, crews reported 20 poles down, then 40, all the way up to 150 towards the end of the day.
As of 4:15 p.m. Monday, there were still roughly 30 customers without power, but Griffin said the utility expected to have all of them back on the grid sometime Monday night if the weather held up as it was expected to.
It’s too early to say how much this late fall storm will cost Maritime Electric.
“Basically, we’ve just deployed everybody at this storm, so we expect within the week to have a ballpark number of the cost of what the storm is.’’
It was also two separate events for the utility. In addition to the major power outage caused by the storm, Maritime Electric lost its connection to New Brunswick. Griffin said they’re still unsure what happened with the connection to the mainland.
And, as with any major power outage, Islanders are no doubt wondering whether it will impact them on their monthly bills.
“Just so people understand, we have a storm budget and we have insurance. We have a storm budget that we allocate for and at this point, because I don’t have the final cost, it’s hard for me to comment outside of that, but we budget for storms. While we prepare for outages every day, that’s part of our job, we also have something in the budget that looks at storms.’’
Related:
