Still 58K customers without power, utility can’t provide restoration targets until damage assessed

N.B. Power crews continue to work through the evening and have restored power to roughly half of those who lost power in the storm.

About 58,000 customers were still in the dark as of Tuesday night, down from a high of more than 100,000 customers Monday morning.

Downed trees and debris continue to be an issue for crews, and additional workers will be joining the restoration efforts  on Wednesday, N.B. Power spokesperson Dominique Couture said, in an emailed statement.

The province’s emergency management operations have opened a number of warming centres across New Brunswick, and a list can be found on the government website.

As the province started to clean up from Monday’s storm, public safety officials spoke to the media Tuesday afternoon in Fredericton.

New Brunswickers need to be prepared for prolonged power outages, said Nicole Poirier, vice-president of operations at N.B. Power, adding that it’s too early to provide specific estimates.

“I would say the entire province was hit. Obviously Charlotte County, southwest New Brunswick, was one of the hardest hit, but we had outages throughout the entire province,” Poirier said.

The town’s only gas station gets slammed as every resident wakes up without power. 

Kyle Leavitt, director of the New Brunswick Emergency Measures Organization, said there were no known injuries so far, but many roads and buildings have been damaged across the province.

“While we’re thankful for that, as mentioned, the threat from the storm is not over. There are downed power lines,” Leavitt said.

Public Safety Minister Kris Austin said that the road to Blacks Harbour and the Grand Manan ferry, which had been closed by downed trees and lines, has been reopened to at least one lane.

“Lots of damage, of course, and many parts of the province are affected.That’s why this will not be a one-day event,” Austin said.

Explosions of colour

The sky lit up in bright blue, orange, red and green on Monday night as tens of thousands of people across the province found themselves with no power as lines went down and transformers blew.

Heather Milley and her son Caelin were witness to the explosions of colour that lit up the Monday night sky.

“We kept joking saying this is our version of the northern lights,” Heather Milley recalled.

A Fredericton resident captured this video Monday night near the West Hills Golf Course during the wind and rain storm.

The two live on Royal Road on Fredericton’s north side, which was partially closed for a period of time Tuesday morning, the downed power lines were moved to the side of the road. Some of the lines had charred the ground and were still giving off a burnt smell hours later.

Caelin said the Monday night show was “a little scary” because there was fire on the power lines

But, it did mean the day off for Caelin because many schools were closed.

Milley said there is a power line hanging near her property with a tree on it, so she expects it will be awhile before her power is restored.

Still, she and Caelin remain in good spirits.

“We try to make the best of everything. What we’re going to do is, we don’t know if we’ll have our power for Christmas, but we can still get along, we can still play games, go outside and make the best of it,” she said.

In Fredericton, the city said Willie O’Ree Place and the Grant-Harvey Centre are open for warming and charging until 11 p.m. today.

In western New Brunswick, a warming and charging centre is open at the Canterbury Community Centre at 22 Mill St.

Damage in Southwest New Brunswick

Pocologan resident Chris Smith lost power Monday evening but has a generator. Smith also owns houses in St. George. He and his family arrived in the town early Tuesday morning and were still sawing fallen trees and clearing debris at noon.

The owner of an Independent Grocer in St. George says the power’s been out since Tuesday night and he’s relying on generators. But he’s getting traffic from Saint Andrews and St. Stephen because of wide storm damage. 

“We had major winds and a lot of trees down, a lot of roofs were damaged and stuff like that, but people are working through,” Smith said.

Daniel Leblanc, who runs the Independent Grocer in St. George, says the store’s power went out and as of Tuesday afternoon, it was running on a generator and wasn’t able to take debit or credit payments.

“Mostly everybody that’s in doesn’t have any power or they’re very limited, or they don’t can’t get fuel for the generator, because there’s only one or two gas stations open in the area,” he said.

‘Devastation’

St. Stephen resident Gail Boucher said she’s lived in the area for 30 years and her husband used to be a lineman for N.B. Power.

“Never seen anything like this before. So windy, scary, [thought] the roof was gonna come off the house,” she said.

“Lee was nothing compared to this. I don’t even think this has a name but we will give it a name, right. Devastation before Christmas.”

‘Never seen anything like this before,’ resident says as town wakes up to fallen trees, power lines.

In Saint John and St. Stephen, 93 km/h was the top speed recorded, according to Environment Canada.

Brad Henderson, the mayor of Saint Andrews, called the storm a “significant weather event.”

Post-tropical storm Lee felt mild compared to the storm Monday, he said.

Henderson said public works crews were back on the scene at 4:30 a.m. clearing debris from roads.

According to the New Brunswick 511 road conditions website, Highway 630 near Canterbury and Highway 122 near Skiff Lake have sections closed because of damage. Additionally, 15 local roads had closures across rural Charlotte County Tuesday evening.

86 calls for service

According to Environment Canada, wind speeds at the Fredericton Airport on Monday were clocked at 100 km/h.

Fredericton Fire Chief Dwayne Killingbeck said the storm brought in 86 calls for service between 4 p.m. and midnight on Monday. He said at any given time, there were 14 calls in the queue. Extra crews and staff were called in to assist, he said.

WATCH | Fire department calls in extra staff, crews to battle storm damage:

Killingbeck said this storm was less significant than Arthur, which swept the province in 2014, and more significant than Lee.

He said with tropical storms, officials can watch them come up the coast, giving a week or more of a heads up. But since Monday’s storm wasn’t a tropical storm, there wasn’t the same advance warning.

“I think there’s going to be a common sound you hear, despite no power in the community, the common sound you’re going to hear today is probably chainsaws,” he said.