Hundreds of thousands of people faced power outages on Tuesday, which could take days to recover from a coastal storm battered by northeasterly winds and drenching rain.
600,000 customers across New England were without power early Tuesday. According to PowerOutage.usIt monitors the application sector.
Most of the outages were in Maine, where more than 430,000 customers were affected as of 7:30 a.m. In Massachusetts, mostly in the eastern part of the state, more than 130,000 customers faced outages, and Connecticut had about 28,000.
National Grid in Massachusetts said in a statement on social media Monday that it has about 2,000 workers responding to storm damage by removing trees and repairing electrical infrastructure. While some customers complained of potentially waiting days to have their power restored, the company said it’s normal for estimated restoration times to fluctuate depending on the amount of work, cause of damage and other factors.
Central Maine Power said on Facebook Monday that it expects a multi-day restoration effort involving hundreds of line and tree crews. The company said high winds in the area prevented some crews from using bucket trucks to make repairs.
By Tuesday morning, it was clear that power outages would continue to disrupt routines for communities across Maine. Dozens of school districts across the state One was closed or operating on a delayed schedule. Some hospitals, including Northern Light Health, a network of 10 hospitals and more than 100 health facilities across the state, continued to face problems on Tuesday.
Company spokesperson WABI told 5According to a local news outlet, the power outage is causing some patients who rely on electricity for home care to flock to hospitals, preventing treatment for those in urgent need.
The storm also wreaked havoc in Canada, with nearly 175,000 homes in four provinces without power early Tuesday.
A coastal storm that lashed South Carolina and North Carolina over the weekend turned deadly as it moved north along the East Coast on Monday, bringing damaging winds and flooding.
An 89-year-old man has died after a large tree was blown down by winds in Massachusetts. In Maine, a 40-year-old man was killed when a tree fell on him while trying to remove his roof.
At one point, the storm knocked out power to more than 750,000 customers across New England, New York and New Jersey.
Weather conditions were so bad that Moretown, Vt., population 1,675. Local officials said residents were told to evacuate their homes due to flooding in the river.
Farther south, the storm disrupted traffic and disrupted mass transit in and around New York City on Monday. Many commuter rail lines were operating with extensive delays, as were buses in the five metros.
The Verrazano Bridge, which connects Staten Island and Brooklyn, was also temporarily closed early Monday morning. When it reopened hours later, tractor-trailers, minibuses, step vans, motorcycles and similar vehicles were banned due to high winds.
