Nova Scotia Power crews work to restore electricity amid poor conditions

Thousands of Nova Scotia Power customers were without electricity on Monday.

Nova Scotia Power crews battled downed wires and scattered outages as thousands of customers were left in the dark following a heavy snowstorm on Monday.

At the peak, 140,000 people – or roughly 25 per cent of the utility’s total customers – were in the dark.

“I work from home and, like, I can’t work, so I need to put my personal day off,” said Dhruv Mashruwala, a Halifax resident. “They kept on changing the restoring time from 7:45 a.m. to 11 a.m. and then to 2:45 p.m. And now it’s supposed to be now 6 p.m.”

Chris Lanteigne with NS Power said the heavy, wet snow stuck to trees, causing them to contact power lines. The utility also blamed poor road conditions for making the restoration work harder.

“We definitely understand that power outages can be frustrating for customers,” Lanteigne said. “We have seen a higher number of power outages today than we had anticipated.”

The utility said most customers would have their power restored by Monday night. According to their outage map, more than 32,000 customers were still in the dark as of 6:15 p.m.

“I’m living in Halifax in the last eight years now and this is the story of every year,” Mashruwala said. “So practically they should have some solution, which, like, I don’t see coming in shorter time because of all the budgeting and other issues.”

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