TRURO, N.S. — Dorian's charge across Colchester County Saturday left thousands without electricity and technicians working furiously to fix the damage.
As of Wednesday morning, Nova Scotia Power said 178 customers in Truro are still affected by outages. The most problematic cases are one-customer outages, often caused by high winds breaking meter masts.
“This is a 24-7 operation and we have crews working day and night and we won’t stop until the last customer is restored,” said NS Power spokesperson Andrea Anderson on Sept. 10.
While the major outages around Truro are mostly resolved, some one-customer cases may not have their service restored until 11 p.m. on Sept. 12.
Before Dorian struck, NS Power pre-positioned 1,000 crews at sites across Nova Scotia. As of Tuesday, 360 power line technician crews were working to fix damaged poles and pylons. Another 81 crews cleared away downed trees across the province.
“The size of the storm was beastly and we had a lot of time to watch the storm as it came up to prepare,” said Anderson. “It did affect more Nova Scotia Power customers than any other storm in our history.”
Roughly 400,000 Nova Scotians were left without power as Dorian crossed the province. As of the morning of Sept. 11, just under 63,000 people across the province still do not have electricity. NSP said the plan was to have all customers to have their power back by week's end.
On Sunday, seven 'comfort stations' for people without electricity were opened up in Colchester County, offering services such as hot food for people without electricity.
However, storm damage in Truro was otherwise light.
David Westlake, emergency management co-ordinator for the Municipality of the County of Colchester, Truro and Upper Stewiacke, said Truro's infrastructure survived fairly well. Water and sewer lines came through intact.
"Compared to other regions of the province, we fared quite well," said Westlake.
Traffic returned to the roads Sunday and and stores and restaurants reopened as power was restored.
Anyone without power can call NS Power’s 24-7 helpline at 1-877-428-6004 for assistance. People can also consult the outage map at http://outagemap.nspower.ca/external/default.html.
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Raw power of nature
Dorian was upgraded to a Category 2 storm by the U.S. National Hurricane Center on Sept. 7, but was reclassified as an intense post-tropical storm later that day.
As a post-tropical storm, Dorian no longer had a warm core but still retained many characteristics of a hurricane, such as dangerous winds and torrential rain.
It made landfall near Sambro Creek, 25 km from Halifax, at 6:15 p.m. with sustained winds of 155 km/h.
