Thousands of outages restored after winter weather slams Nova Scotia

CITYnews halifax / By Mark Hodgins

A blast of winter weather wreaked havoc on Nova Scotia’s electrical utility, leaving tens of thousands without power to start the week.

At its peak on Monday morning, 130,000 Nova Scotia Power customers were without electricity. That number was down to about 37,000 by 6 p.m. as Nova Scotia Power crews worked through the day.

The Halifax area saw a majority of the outages from the storm after heavy, wet snow accumulated overnight into Monday morning.

Nova Scotia Power opened its emergency operations centre at 6 a.m. Monday, in the midst of the storm, and said the heavy snow brought down trees and branches onto power lines and piled up on power equipment.

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“Road conditions have been a challenge already and slowing our ability to get to sites to restore power,” said Pam Scully Poirier, Nova Scotia Power storm lead, adding hundreds of crew members were out in the field working on restoring power. “We appreciate the collaboration with our partners at EMO and the hard-working crews out clearing the heavy snowfall from the roads so our crews can get to where they need to go.”