PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - It’s likely about 10,000 customers will still be without service at the end of the day despite a push by thousands of workers to get the power back on throughout its service territory, officials with Maine’s largest electric utility said Saturday.
By mid-morning Saturday, about 36,400 Central Maine Power customers were without power, the most in Lincoln and Kennebec counties.
Utility officials had said they hoped to have all customers restored by the end of Saturday, but that wasn’t going to be possible.
In a conference call, Central Maine Power President Sara Burns said some customers in the most heavily damaged areas, on remote roads or on Maine islands would take more time.
“We will achieve our goal of getting most of our customers on tonight,” Burn said.
Emera Maine was reporting just under 6,000 outages.
Utilities in both New Hampshire and Vermont are reporting about 2,500 outages. In Vermont, the figure is about 550.
Hundreds of thousands of customers in the three states were without power for after the storm whacked the region Sunday, knocking down trees and power lines. At one point, more than half of Maine’s population was without power.
Officials in the three states expect to seek federal assistance to pay for the repairs.
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