High winds and heavy rain from Fiona left nearly 500,000 Maritimes without power at the peak of the blackouts.
The powerful post-tropical storm, which saw wind gusts of up to 141km/h in Sydney and estimates of more than 200mm of rain, continued to make its way across the Atlantic region on Saturday afternoon into evening.
NEW SCOTLAND
As of 6 p.m. Sunday, 212,479 customers were without power in Nova Scotia.
Nova Scotia Power (NSP) storm leader Matt Drover says crews have been able to survey the damage after wind levels prevented them from doing so for much of Saturday.
“This is a great day for us,” Drover said during a news conference on Sunday. “We are seeing extensive damage, in the eastern part of the province, specifically in Cape Breton, where hundreds of utility poles have collapsed as trees have collapsed on them from hurricane-force winds.”
He says that NSP will begin to form a plan on general power restoration once the extent of the damage is better understood.
Drover says NSP has drones and helicopters in the air Sunday to determine the extent of the damage.
More than 1,000 utility crew members are ashore in Nova Scotia on Sunday, with more coming from Ontario, other Maritime provinces and the United States, Drover said.
He says the biggest challenge keeping power from coming back online in some areas is the ability of crews to get there.
“So, we’re working very closely with EMO on that, clearing roads, making sure we have access to all those hard-to-reach areas, sending crews out to fix those poles,” Drover said. “We had entire streets where trees came down and broke almost every pole along that street.”
Drover asks anyone in Nova Scotia who is without power and has not seen their area on NSP’s outage map to call the utility company and report the outage.
NEW BRUNSWICK
As of 6 p.m. Sunday, 12,108 customers in New Brunswick were without power.
In an interview with CTV Atlantic, a representative from NB Power noted that estimated restoration times currently run through Sunday night.
“Outages continue to be reported as the weather system works its way through New Brunswick, so we expect more outages throughout the day,” the representative said, adding that while crews are active in every district, the southeast of the province is the hardest hit.
According to NB Power, more than 79,000 customers in the province have been without power since storm conditions began on Friday night.
PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND
As of 6 p.m. Sunday, 81,175 customers were without power on Prince Edward Island.
In a PEI EMO update on Saturday afternoon, officials noted that the recovery response will be “multi-million dollar.”
“In the last 12 hours, our province has experienced historic weather conditions caused by Hurricane Fiona,” Premier Dennis King said. “It has been, to state the obvious, a whole day. And while we hope the worst is behind us, so far we know the storm is not over.”
Officials say there have been no reports of significant storm-related injuries or deaths.
Fiona brought winds of more than 170 km/h and storm surges of more than two meters to Prince Edward Island, causing downed power lines and flooding.
“Based on early accounts, the devastation appears to be beyond anything we have witnessed before on Prince Edward Island,” King said, adding that the road to recovery for the province will be “weeks or more.”
Around 7 p.m. Saturday, Charlottetown police tweeted a warning about traveling on the highways, writing, “the number of people on the highways is absurd.”
“If you are out for reasons other than an emergency or to get to your job as an essential worker, you are impeding cleanup and the passage of emergency vehicles,” they added.